GIFT  OF 

SEELEY  W.  MUDD 

GEORGE  I.  COCHRAN     MEYER  ELSASSER 

DR.  JOHN  R.  HAYNES    WILLIAM  L.  HONNOLD 

JAMES  R.  MARTIN         MRS.  JOSEPH  F.SARTORI 

to  ike 

UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 

SOUTHERN  BRANCH 


A    STUDY    OF    DEATH 


BV 


HENRY   MILLS   ALDEN 

AUTHOR   OK 
"GOD  IN   HIS  WORLD:    AN  INTERPRETATION" 


NKW      York 
H  A  k  1' L  k    &     LKOTIIEkS    1' U  I!  L  I  S  H  K  R  i> 


'S95 


79GT1 


f  Tt''     7 


Copyright,  1S95,  by  Harper  &  Bkotheks. 

All  rights  reserved. 


TO   AIY   BELOVED   WIFE 

OnilT    MAI    VIII.,  MUCCCXCV 

My  earliest  written  expression  of  intimate  thought  or 
cherished  fancy  was  for  your  eyes  only  ;  it  was  my  first  ap- 
proach to  your  maidenly  heart,  a  mystical  wooing,  which 
neglected  no  resource,  near  or  remote,  for  the  enhancement 
of  its  charm,  and  so  involved  all  other  mystery  in  its  own. 

In  you  childhood  has  been  inviolate,  never  losing  its  power 
of  leading  me  by  an  unspoken  invocation  to  a  green  field, 
ever  kept  fresh  by  a  living  fountain,  where  the  Shepherd 
tends  his  flock.  Now,  through  a  body  racked  with  pain  and 
sadly  broken,  still  shines  this  unbroken  childhood,  teaching 
me  Love's  deepest  mystery. 

It  is  fitting,  then,  that  I  should  dedicate  to  you  this  book 
touching  that  mystery.  It  has  been  written  in  the  shadow, 
but  illumined  by  the  brightness  of  an  angel's  face  seen  in 
the  darkness,  so  that  it  has  seemed  easy  and  natural  for  me 
to  find  at  the  thorn's  heart  a  secret  and  everlasting  sweet- 
ness far  surpassing  that  of  the  rose  itself,  which  ceases  in  its 
own  perfection. 

Whether  that  angel  we  have  seen  shall,  for  my  need  and 
comfort  and  for  your  own  longing,  hold  back  his  greatest 
gift,  and  leave  you  mine  in  the  earthly  ways  we  know  and 
love,  or  shall  hasten  to  make  the  heavenly  surprise,  the 
issue  in  either  event  will  be  a  home-coming:  if  bcr,\  yet  al- 
ready the  deeper  secret  will  have  been  in  part  disclosed  ;  and 
if  hnond,  that  secret,  fully  known,  will  not  betray  the  fond- 
est hope  of  loving  hearts.  Love  never  denied  Death,  and 
Death  will  not  deny  Love. 

H.  i\\.  A. 

.May   1,  iSqs. 


PREFACE 

Death  and  Evil,  as  considered  in  this  work,  are 
essentially  one,  and  belong  to  Life  not  only  in  its 
manifestation  but  in  its  creative,  or  genetic,  qual- 
ity. Life,  in  its  principle,  is  not  good  or  evil, 
mortal  or  immortal ;  but  as  creative  it  becomes 
evil  as  well  as  good,  and  is  immortal  only  as  in- 
cluding mortality.  This  is  also  true  of  its  crea- 
tive transformations,  in  that  series  which  we  call 
its  development.  It  is  also,  from  the  beginning, 
redemption  as  it  is  creation.  Redemption  is  crea- 
tive and  creation  is  redemptive.  The  fountain  is 
clear,  and  the  stream  clears  itself. 

This  is  our  proposition.  It  is  not  new.  It  was 
St.  Paul's  theme.  Always  it  is  the  spiritual  in- 
tuition as  distinguished  from  the  strictly  ethical 
view  of  life.  James  Hinton,  writing  thirty -five 
years  ago,  insisted  upon  the  positive  and  radical 
character  of  evil ;  but  he  excluded  sin  from  this 
view — a  reservation  which  seems  to  us  unneces- 
sary and  which  St.  Paul  did  not  make.  The  pres- 
ent work  had  been  practically  completed  when 
the  four  volumes  of  Mr.  Flinton's  privately  printcil 
MSS.  were  placetl    in   my  hands.      Of   these  vol- 


vi  PREFACE 

umes,  comprising  altogether  about  three  thousand 
royal  octavo  pages,  I  have  been  able  to  examine 
only  the  first.  I  have  found  in  this  so  many  re- 
markable resemblances  to  positions  which  I  have 
taken  that,  although  the  divergencies  of  view  are 
equally  remarkable,  I  feel  under  an  obligation 
(such  as  would  have  no  force  in  the  case  of  a  pub- 
lished work)  to  allude  to  the  fact.  Mr.  Hinton 
lays  more  stress  than  I  have  done  upon  alterna- 
tivity  in  cosmic  processes,  more,  however,  with 
reference  to  polarisation  and  the  vibratile  charac- 
ter of  all  motion  than  to  the  meaning  I  have  had 
in  view  in  what  I  have  designated  as  tropic  re- 
action. My  idea  of  the  term  "  Limit  "  more  near- 
ly corresponds  to  his  use  of  it,  though  the  applica- 
tion is  not  the  same.  He  thoroughly  understood 
the  value  of  the  paradox.  Mr.  Hinton's  treatise 
is  not  devoted  to  any  particular  theme ;  it  is 
meant  to  represent  the  history  of  a  mind  in  its 
workings  toward  an  interpretation  of  universal 
life ;  and  so  many  of  his  propositions  are  of  a 
tentative  character,  being  subsequently  modified 
and  sometimes  reversed,  that  only  a  critical  sur- 
vey of  the  entire  MSS.  would  yield  the  residuum 
of  his  thought.  No  one  reading  his  writings  can 
fail  to  be  impressed  by  the  originality  and  depth 
of  his  interpretation  or  to  regret  that  his  life  was 
not  spared  long  enough  to  enable  him  to  organise 
his  work  into  special  theses  upon  the  subjects 
treated.     He  wrote  at  a  time  when  the  Darwinian 


hypothesis  had  been  but  recently  broached,  yet 
he  anticipated  much  that  has  since  been  the  re- 
sult of  patient  scientific  research.  His  little  vol- 
ume, entitled  "The  Mystery  of  Pain,"  by  which 
alone  he  is  known  to  the  t^eneral  readini;  public, 
taken  in  connection  with  his  unpublished  writ- 
ings, convinces  nie  that  no  writer  could  luuc 
i^iven  to  the  work!  a  work  of  such  philosophic 
value  as  he  mii^ht  have  prepared  on  the  subject  I 
have  undertaken.  After  all,  perhaps  there  has 
been  no  deeper  insight  shown  or  more  subtle  in- 
terpretation offered  in  this  field  than  is  to  be 
found  in  Robert  Browning's  poetrj-. 

Recent  science  abounds  in  suggestions  of  which 
I  have  availed  most  freely.  Science  discloses  re- 
demption in  the  realm  of  matter,  and  helps  us 
to  sec  death  in  birth  aiui,  in  all  development,  the 
radical  disturbance.  The  course  of  science  itself 
is  redemptive  ;  lost  in  its  specialisations,  its  con- 
finement .seeks  release,  anil  an  angel  appears  in 
its  prison.  I-lven  the  reptile  followed  to  the  end 
of  its  cinirse  is  seen  to  take  to  itself  wings  for 
ascension.  The  bee,  closely  observed,  is  seen  to 
inject  into  each  cell  of  honey  some  poison  from 
his  sting  which  makes  the  sweetness  wholesome 
— a  venom  inherent  in  the  virtue. 

In  my  restatement  of  cosmic  specialisation,  fol- 
lowing the  clues  furnished  by  science,  I  ha\e 
sought  to  emphasise  the  creative  (juality  of  Life 
in  all  its  transformations  and  the  homely  sense  of 


viii  PREFACE 

things  in  a  living  universe :  to  see  that  Genesis  is 
Kinship. 

In  our  reasoning,  which  must  be  imaginative, 
our  path  is  through  a  series  of  analogues,  which 
cease  to  be  helpful  and,  indeed,  mislead  us  if  they 
are  not  themselves  transformed  in  their  trans- 
lation from  one  order  of  existence  to  another. 
Each  successive  order  in  the  series  of  creative 
transformations  is  a  version  or  flexion,  shown,  in 
due  course  of  the  general  movement,  as  a  rever- 
sion. Then  we  see  that  from  the  first  the  entire 
movement  is  reversion — the  turning  always  a  re- 
turning— so  that  the  universe  reflects  Godward. 
We  find  that  this  reversion  is  conspicuously  ap- 
parent in  the  organic  kingdom.  It  is  triumphant- 
ly manifest  in  the  Christ-life. 

But  Death  and  Evil  are  continued  (whatever 
their  transformation)  into  every  new  order — even 
into  the  kingdom  of  heaven,  being  therein  lifted 
into  their  own  heaven,  where  they  are  seen  for 
what,  in  creation  and  redemption,  they  essentially 
are. 

Faith  boldly  occupies  the  field  of  pessimism, 
finding  therein  its  largest  hope. 

Henry  Mills  Alden. 


CONTENTS 


rUOEM 
THK    DOVK    AND    THE    SERPENT 


l-Al.B 

3 


FIRST   liOOK 

CHAP.  1  wo    VISIONS   OF    DEATH 

I.    THE    liODY    OF    DEATH <> 

11.     IHE    MV.STICAI,    VISION 13 


SECOND    nooK 
NATIVE    IMPRESSIONS       ... 


27 


TIIIKI)    r.UUK 

PRODIGAL    sons:     A    COSMIC    PARAIiLK 

I.    THE    DIVIDED    LIVINC. <.5 

11.    THE    MORAL    ORDER 133 

III.    ASCENT   AND    DESCENT    OK    I.IKE 183 


FOURTH    HOOK 

Itr.ATH    CNMASnCED 

!.    A    SINGULAR    REVELATION  .       . 
11.    THE    PAULINE    INTERPRETATION 

III.    CHRISTENDOM 

IV.    ANOTHER    WtiUI.D         .... 
INDEX 


PROEM 
THK  DOVE  AND  THE  SHRPFNT 


PROEM 

THE    DOVE    AND   THE   SERPENT 

THE  Dove  flies,  and  the  Serpent  creeps.     Yet  is  the 
Dove  fond,  while  the  Serpent  is  the  emblem  of 
wisdom. 

Uoth  were  in  Eden  :  the  cooinj]^,  fluttering;,  winged 
spirit,  loving  to  descend,  companion  -  like,  brooding, 
following;  and  the  creeping  thing  which  had  glided 
into  the  sunshine  of  Paradise  from  the  cold  bosoms  of 
those  nurses  of  an  older  world — Pain  and  Darkness 
and  Death — himself  forgetting  these  in  the  warmth  and 
green  life  of  the  Garden.  And  our  first  parents  knew 
nought  of  these  as  yet  unutterable  mysteries,  any  more 
than  they  knew  that  their  roses  bloomed  over  a  tomb ; 
so  that  when  all  animate  creatures  came  to  Adam  to 
be  named,  the  meaning  of  this  living  allegory  which 
passed  before  him  was  in  great  part  hidden,  and  he 
saw  no  sharp  line  dividing  the  firmament  below  from 
the  firmament  above ;  rather  he  leaned  toward  the 
ground,  as  one  docs  in  a  garden,  seeing  how  quickly 
it  was  fashioned  into  the  climbing  trees,  into  the  clean 
flowers,  and  into  his  own  shapely  frame.  It  was  upon 
the  ground  he  lay  when  that  deep  sleep  fell  upon  him 
from  which  he  woke  to  find  his  mate,  lithe  as  the  ser- 
pent, yet  with  tiic  MiitfiMiiig  heart  of  the  dove. 


4  A  STUDY  OF  DEATH 

As  the  Dove,  though  winged  for  flight,  ever  de- 
scended, so  the  Serpent,  though  unable  to  wholly  leave 
the  ground,  tried  ever  to  lift  himself  therefrom,  as  if  to 
escape  some  ancient  bond.  The  cool  nights  revived 
and  nourished  his  memories  of  an  older  time,  wherein 
lay  his  subtile  wisdom,  but  day  by  day  his  aspiring 
crest  grew  brighter.  The  life  of  Eden  became  for  him 
oblivion,  the  light  of  the  sun  obscuring  and  confound- 
ing his  reminiscence,  even  as  for  Adam  and  Eve  this 
life  was  Illusion,  the  visible  disguising  the  invisible, 
and  pleasure  veiling  pain. 

In  Adam  the  culture  of  the  ground  maintained  hu- 
mility. He  was  held,  moreover,  in  lowly  content  by 
the  charm  of  the  woman,  who  was  to  him  like  the 
earth  grown  human  ;  and  since  she  was  the  daughter 
of  Sleep,  her  love  seemed  to  him  restful  as  the  night. 
Her  raven  locks  were  like  the  mantle  of  darkness,  and 
her  voice  had  the  laughter  of  streams  that  laj^sed  into 
unseen  depths. 

But  Eve  had  something  of  the  Serpent's  unrest,  as  if 
she  too  had  come  from  the  Underworld,  which  she 
would  fain  forget,  seeking  liberation,  urged  by  desire  as 
deep  as  the  abyss  she  had  left  behind  her  and  nour- 
ished from  roots  unfathomly  hidden — -the  roots  of  the 
Tree  of  Life.  She  thus  came  to  have  conversation 
with  the  Serpent. 

In  the  lengthening  days  of  Eden's  one  Summer  these 
two  were  more  and  more  completely  enfolded  in  the 
Illusion  of  Light.  It  was  under  this  spell  that,  dwell- 
ing upon  the  enticement  of  fruit  good  to  look  at  and 
pleasant  to  the  taste,  the  Serpent  denied  Death,  and 
thought  of  Good  as  separate  from  Evil.     "Ye  shall  not 


THE  DOyE  AND   THE  SERPENT  $ 

surely  die,  but  shall  be  as  the  gods,  knowing  good  and 
evil."  So  far,  in  his  aspiring  day-dream,  had  the  Ser- 
pent fared  from  his  old  familiar  haunts — so  far  from 
his  old-world  wisdom ! 

A  surer  omen  would  have  come  to  Eve  had  she 
listened  to  the  plaintive  notes  of  the  bewildered  Dove 
that  in  his  downward  tlutterings  had  begun  to  divine 
what  the  Serpent  had  come  to  forget,  and  to  confess 
what  he  had  come  to  deny. 

For  already  was  beginning  to  be  felt  "  the  season's 
difference,"  and  the  grave  mystery,  without  which  Para- 
dise itself  could  not  have  been,  was  about  to  be  un- 
veiled, the  background  of  the  picture  becoming  its  fore- 
ground. The  fond  hands  plucking  the  rose  had  found 
the  thorn.  Evil  was  known  as  something  by  itself, 
apart  from  (iood,  and  Eden  was  left  behind,  as  one 
steps  out  of  infancy. 

From  that  hour  have  the  eyes  of  the  children  of  men 
been  turned  from  the  accursed  earth,  looking  into  the 
blue  above,  straining  their  vision  for  a  glimpse  of  white- 
robed  angels. 

Vet  it  was  the  Serpent  that  was  lifted  up  in  the  wil- 
derness ;  and  when  lie  who  "  became  sin  for  us  "  was 
being  bruised  in  the  heel  by  the  old  enemy,  the  Dove 
descended  upon  him  at  his  baptism.  He  united  the 
wisdom  of  the  Serpent  with  the  harmlessness  of  the 
Dove.  Thus  in  him  were  bound  together  and  recon- 
ciled the  elements  which  in  iiuman  thought  had  been 
put  asunder.  In  him  Evil  is  overcome  of  (iood,  as  in 
him  Death  is  swallowed  up  of  Life  ;  and  with  his  eyes 
we  see  that  the  robes  of  angels  arc  white  because  tiiey 
have  been  washed  in  blootl. 


FIRST   BOOK 
TWO   VISIONS   OF   DEATH 


CIIAPTEK    I 
THK    liODV    OF    nKAI'H 

LI  VK  has  f;one.  There  is  no  next  l^reath,  no  return 
of  the  pulse.  No  stillness  is  so  blank  and  void  of 
all  suggestion.  The  sculptured  marble,  through  the 
arrest  of  motion,  becomes  forever  mobile ;  but  here 
the   interruption  is  final,  fixed   in  a  frozen 

,  ,„,  .       ,  .  Fiiuility. 

calm.  1  here  is  here  no  poetic  cxsura,  or 
pause  between  two  strains  of  the  same  harmony.  The 
way  in  which  these  feet  have  walked  has  come  to  a 
full  stop;  of  the  motions  and  uses  peculiar  to  this  or- 
ganism as  a  means  of  human  expression  there  is  no 
continuance. 

This  abrupt  conclusion  begets  in  us  a  dull  astonish- 
ment, as  if  we  were  suddenly  come  against  a  blank 
wall,  an  unyielding,  insurmountable  barrier.  The  op- 
erations of  Nature,  the  most  obvious  and  the  most  im- 
pressive, being  forever  recurrent,  cultivate  in  us  the 
habit  of  expectation,  so  that  we  refuse  to  accept  final- 
ity. Lulls  there  may  be,  divitling  pauses,  but  no  ab- 
solute conclusion.  The  thing  which  hath  been  is  that 
which  shall  be,  and  having  the  same  form  and  charac- 
ter. The  same  sun  forever  rises  again,  and  whatever 
the  change  of  conditions,  this  change  is  itself  repeated 
in  the  uniform  succession  of  seasons.  The  di.sappear- 
ance  of  the  individual   organism,  after  its  brief  cvcle. 


lo  A  STUDY  OF  DEATH 

we  scarcely  note,  since  through  the  succession  of  gen- 
erations we  are  surrounded  by  the  same  forms  in  all 
their  variety ;  it  is  taken  to  heart  only  when  the  ties 
of  kinship  or  cherished  companionship  are  broken. 
Then,  the  first  shock  having  passed — the  wonder  that 
one  so  full  of  life  has  come  into  this  blind  silence — a 
great  wave  bears  us  backward  :  we  remember,  and  every 
memory  has  its  thorn  of  sharp  regret ;  every  thought 
of  what  has  been  is  pierced  by  the  arrows  of  sorrow, 
as  a  cloud  by  lightnings,  breaking  into  a  storm  of  tears, 
because  that  which  has  been  can  never  be  again. 

Expectation  is  paralysed  by  this  dull,  unanswering 
silence.  There  is  no  response  to  our  love  or  our  grief; 
no  future  for  our  waiting.  We  are  in  no  presence  ;  it 
is  the  brutal  fact  of  absence  that  stares  us  in  the  face. 

We  may  not  say  that  the  beloved  sleeps,  for  where 
is  this  sleeper,  who  has  so  suddenly  fled  that  it  is  left 
for  us  to  close  the  eyes  and  compose  the  rigid  limbs  ? 
Instead  of  relaxation,  as  of  one  weary  and  brought  to 
rest,  there  is  extreme  rigor,  as  of  one  entering  upon 
some  mighty  travail.  But  this  darkness  veils  not  sleep 
nor  the  free  play  of  dreams ;  and  from  it  there  is  no 
waking  either  to  work  or  to  weep. 

This  is  the  mere  body  of  death,  held  out  to  us  in  its 

stark  and  glacial  calm  for  a  moment  of  tender  care, 

which  for  it  has  no  meaning — for  our  tribute  of  tears, 

to  which  it  is  insensible ;  for  the  ritual  of 

1  he  After-part  Qi^j.  gj-jef  ^^^  faith,  in  which   it  can   have 

of  a  Mystery.  "  ' 

no  part.  It  offers  no  illusion  ;  every  door 
is  shut.  It  is  a  mute  and  surd  in  any  human  harmo- 
ny, a   senseless   contradiction,  a   brutal   negation,  an 


THE   BODY  OF  DF..4TH  ii 

irrational  conclusion.  If  it  were  even  dormant,  then 
might  we  await  a  transformation,  like  that  of  the  chrys- 
alis, or  like  that  which  happened  to  this  very  organism 
when  it  emerged  from  its  antenatal  sleep.  There  is 
indeed  to  be  a  change,  but  not  like  that.  Instead 
of  a  new  synthesis,  wherein,  through  a  dormant  larval 
mystery,  an  organism  climbs  into  an  upper  chamber 
of  the  House  of  Life,  freshly  apparelled  for  a  daintier 
bridal-feast — instead  of  this  increment  of  beauty  and 
wonder,  we  shall  see  dissolution,  a  sinking  analytic  mo- 
tion, whereby  every  complexion  simulating  the  proper 
character  and  habit  of  a  man  shall  be  obliterated.  In 
this  dissolving  view  all  psychical  and  even  all  physio- 
logical suggestions  vanish,  and  are  seen  to  be  imperti- 
nent to  such  processes  as  belong  exclusively  to  the  in- 
organic kingdom.  So  alien  to  humanity  is  this  change 
that  it  is  offensive  to  human  sensibility  and  noxious  to 
human  health  ;  and  our  most  pressing  xroncern,  after 
mourning  over  our  dead,  is  that  we  may  bury  it  out  of 
our  sight. 

A  primal  instinct  urges  the  animal  into  seclusion  at 
the  approach  of  death,  and  leads  men  to  cover  their 
faces  or  turn  them  to  the  wall,  signifying  that  here 
beginneth  a  mystery  not  open  to  outward  observation. 
I'rom  the  beginning  this  was  the  soul's  supreme  con- 
fessional, wherein  it  repented  itself  of  the  world,  for- 
saking all  trodden  ways,  acknowledging  their  finality 
and  its  own  utter  weariness  of  them,  and  was  shown 
the  hidden  thoroughfare  leading  to  the  Father's  house. 

The  mystery  has  passed  before  its  mere  after-part 
arrests  our  notice.  There  is  in  our  staring  eyes  no 
more  than  in  those  of  the  dead  any  speculation  that 


12  A  STUDY   OF  DEATH 

will  help  us  to  its  comprehension.  The  gravedigger's 
philosophy  is  as  shallow  and  noisome  as  the  work  of 
his  hands.  All  considerations  based  upon  what  we 
see,  or  think  we  see,  of  death  are  empty  fallacies. 
Hamlet  at  Ophelia's  grave  is  not  more  fantastic  in 
considering  "  to  what  base  uses  we  may  return  "  than 
is  Claudio  when  he  shapes  his  fears  : 

"Aye,  but  to  die  and  go  we  know  not  where; 
To  lie  in  cold  obstruction,  and  to  rot  ; 
This  sensible  warm  motion  to  become 
A  kneaded  clod  ;  and  the  delighted  spirit 
To  bathe  in  fiery  floods,  or  to  reside 
In  thrilling  regions  of  rock-ribbed  ice  ; 
To  be  imprisoned  in  the  viewless  winds, 
And  blown  with  restless  violence  round  about 
The  pendent  world  ;  or  to  be  worse  than  worst 
Of  those  that  lawless  and  uncertain  thoughts 
Imagine  howling  !     'Tis  too  horrible  !" 

To  the  physicist  death  is  but  the  exact  payment  of 
man's  debt  to  Nature,  through  the  return  of  so  much 
matter  and  so  much  force  to  that  general  fund  of  mat- 
ter and  of  force  which,  in  the  scientific  view,  remains  in 
all  permutations  forever  the  same  unchangeable  quan- 
tity. But  the  scales  of  the  chemist  or  his  crucible 
touch  not  the  real  mystery  any  more  nearly  tiian  does 
the  gravedigger's  spade.  And  for  the  most  part  those 
homilies  wherewith  we  help  out  the  funereal  gloss  that 
we  have  put  upon  death  have  the  same  open  -  eyed 
emptiness  and  fatuity.  Only  to  the  closed  eyes  is 
there  the  true  vision. 


CllAl'TKR    II 
THK    MYSriCAI.    VISION 

The  Angel  of  Death  is  the  invisible  Angel  of  Life. 
While  the  organism  is  alive  as  a  human  embodiment 
death  is  present,  having  the  same  human  distinction 
as  the  life,  from  which  it  is  inseparable,  be- 
ing  indeed    the  better  half   of   living  —  its  "'l^.^gX'^^" 
winged  half,  its  rest  and  inspiration,  its  secret 
spring  of  elasticity  and  quickness.      Life  came  upon 
the  wings  of  Death,  and  so  departs. 

If  we  think  of  life  apart  from  death  our  thought  is 
partial,  as  if  we  would  give  flight  to  the  arrow  without 
bending  the  bow.  No  living  movement  cither  begins 
or  is  completed  save  through  death.  If  the  shuttle 
return  not  there  is  no  web ;  and  the  texture  of  life  is 
woven  through  this  tropic  movement. 

It  is  a  commonly  accepted  scientific  truth  that  the 
continuance  of  life  in  any  living  thing  depends  upon 
death.  But  there  are  two  ways  of  expressing  this 
truth  :  one,  regarding  merely  the  outward  fact,  as  when 
we  say  that  animal  or  vegetable  tissue  is  renewed 
through  decay ;  the  other,  regarding  the  action  and  re- 
action proper  to  life  itself,  whereby  it  forever  springs 
freshly  from  its  source.  The  latter  form  of  expression 
is  mystical,  in  the  true  meaning  of  that  term.  \\c 
close  our  eyes  to   the   outward   appearance,  in   orilcr 


14  A  STUDY  OF  DEATH 

that  we  may  directly  confront  a  mystery  which  is  al- 
ready past  before  there  is  any  visible  indication  there- 
of. Though  the  imagination  engaged  in  this  mystical 
apprehension  borrows  its  symbols  or  analogues  from 
observation  and  experience,  yet  these  symbols  are 
spiritually  regarded  by  looking  at  life  on  its  living  side 
and  abstracted  as  far  as  possible  from  outward  em- 
bodiment. We  especially  affect  physiological  ana- 
logues because,  being  derived  from  our  experience, 
we  may  the  more  readily  have  the  inward  regard  of 
them;  and  bypassing  from  one  physiological  analogue 
to  another,  and  from  all  these  to  those  furnished  by 
the  processes  of  nature  outside  of  our  bodies,  we  come 
to  an  apprehension  of  the  action  and  reaction  proper 
to  life  itself  as  an  idea  independent  of  all  its  physical 
representations. 

Thus  we  trace  the  rhythmic  beating  of  the  pulse  to 
the  systole  and  diastole  of  the  heart,  and  we  note  a 
similar  alternation  in  the  contraction  and  relaxation 
of  all  our  muscles.  Breathing  is  alternately  inspira- 
tion and  expiration.  Sensation  itself  is  by  beats,  and 
falls  into  rhythm.  There  is  no  uninterrupted  strain  of 
either  action  or  sensibility;  a  current  or  a  contact  is 
renewed,  having  been  broken.  In  ps3'chical  operation 
there  is  the  same  alternate  lapse  and  resurgence. 
Memory  rises  from  the  grave  of  oblivion.  No  holding 
can  be  maintained  save  through  alternate  release. 
Pulsation  establishes  circulation,  and  vital  motions  pro- 
ceed through  cycles,  each  one  of  which,  however  mi- 
nute, has  its  tropic  of  Cancer  and  of  Capricorn.  Then 
there  are  the  larger  physiological  cycles,  like  that 
wherein  sleep  is  the  alternation   of  waking.     Passing 


THR  MYSTIC/IL   y IS  ION  15 

from  the  field  of  our  direct  experience  to  that  of  obser- 
vation, we  note  similar  alternations,  as  of  day  and  night, 
summer  and  winter,  Hood  and  ebb  tide ;  and  science 
discloses  them  at  every  turn,  especially  in  its  recent 
consideration  of  the  subtle  forces  of  Nature,  leading 
us  back  of  all  visible  motions  to  the  pulsations  of  the 
ether. 

Mechanism  does  not  escape  this  trope  and  rhapsody, 
being  indeed  their  most  conspicuous  illustration,  since 
its  fundamental  principle  is  that  of  leverage,  whereby 
there  is  libration  or  oscillation,  as  of  a  scale  or  a  pen- 
dulum, or  circular  motion  as  of  a  wheel.  In  celestial 
mechanism  the  material  fulcrum  disappears,  and  there 
is  the  invisible  centre  of  motion,  of  Might  and  return, 
through  tendencies  which  seem  to  balance  each  other, 
giving  the  motion  the  orbital  form. 

In  the  nebular  hypothesis  Science  has  presented  us 
a  view  of  the  development  of  the  universe  from  a  neb- 
ulous expanse,  to  which,  in  its  final  dissolution,  it  must 
return.  This  immense  pulsation  is  the  grand  cycle, 
the  tropics  of  which  evade  all  human  calculation. 

Now  all  these  analogues  or  phenomenal  representa- 
tions of  tropic  movement  lead  us  to  the  apprehension 
of  the  trope  as  proper  to  life  itself;  they  are  the  for- 
m;il  imaginations  of  an  imageless  truth.  The  trope  it- 
self vanishes  into  its  invisible  ground,  and  wc  have  no 
definite  expression  of  it  save  in  its  manifestation. 

The  insistence,  however,  upon  a  mystical  appre- 
hension is  not  foreign  to  science,  which  demands  for 
its  own  completeness  an  invisible  world.  To  account 
for  the  communication  of  energy  through  cosmic  space, 
the    physicist    postnl.ites   as   a    mcdiuni    the    invisible 


i6  A  STUDY   OF  DEATH 

ether,  the  vortical  motions  of  which  have  displaced 
what  were  formerly  known  as  the  ultimate  atoms.  It 
is  but  a  step  from  the  ethereal  vibration  to  the  pul- 
sation of  the  Eternal  Life.  We  say  pulsation,  still 
clinging  to  an  image,  to  the  visible  skirts  of  our  ex- 
pression of  what  is  in  itself  ineffable,  even  as  the 
Prophet  was  placed  in  the  cleft  of  a  rock  and  so 
had  the  vision  of  a  God  who  had  passed  by,  whose 
face  no  man  can  see.  We  behold  that  movement  of 
pulsing  life  which  is  manifest,  which  is  in  time  and 
which  measures  time ;  the  alternate  movement,  out- 
wardly apparent  to  us  in  dissolution  only,  is  a  vanishing 
from  our  view  into  a  field  whither  we  may  not  follow 
with  the  terms  pertinent  to  existence  in  space  and 
time — the  field  of  a  measureless  eternal  life.  We  are 
at  a  loss  for  predicates,  and  resort  to  negations.  But 
that  concerning  which  our  negation  is — that  is  Being 
itself,  the  ground  of  existence  and  of  persistence,  of 
appearance  and  of  reappearance. 

In  considering  the  action  and  reaction  proper  to  life 
itself,  we  here  dismiss  from  view  all  measured  cycles, 
whose  beginning  and  end  are  appreciably  separate ; 
our  regard  is  confined  to  living  moments,  so  fleet  that 
their  beginning  and  ending  meet  as  in  one  point,  which 
is  seen  to  be  at  once  the  point  of  departure  and  of 
return.  Thus  we  may  speak  of  a  man's  life  as  includ- 
ed between  his  birth  and  his  death,  and,  with  reference 
to  this  physiological  term,  think  of  him  as  living  and 
then  as  dead  ;  but  we  may  also  consider  him  while  liv- 
ing as  yet  every  moment  dying,  and  in  this  view  death 
is  clearly  seen  to  be  the  inseparable  companion  of  life, 
the  way  of  return  and  so  of  continuance.     This  pulsa- 


THF  MYSTICAL    I^ISION  17 

tion,  forever  a  vanishing  and  a  resurgence,  so  incal- 
culably swift  as  to  escape  observation,  is  proper  to  life 
as  life,  does  not  begin  with  what  we  call  birth  nor  end 
with  what  we  call  death  (considering  birth  and  death 
as  terms  applicable  to  ap  individual  existence)  ;  it  is 
forever  beginning  and  forever  ending.  Thus  to  all 
manifest  existence  we  apply  the  term  Nature  [natum), 
which  means /on~fcr  l>ei//,if  l>orn ;  and  on  its  vanishing 
side  it  is  moritiira,  or  forci'er  dying.  Resurrection  is 
thus  a  natural  and  perpetual  miracle.  The  idea  of  life 
as  transcending  any  individual  embodiment  is  as  ger- 
mane to  science  as  it  is  to  faith. 

Death,  thus  seen  as  essential,  is  lifted  above  its 
temporary  and  visible  accidents.  It  is  no  longer  asso- 
ciated with  corruption,  but  rather  with  the  sweet  and 
wholesome  freshness  of  life,  being  the  way  of 

.Absolution. 

Its  renewal.     Sweeter  than  the  honey  which 
Samson  found  in  the  lion's  carcass  is  this  everlasting 
sweetness  of  Death  ;  and  it  is  a  mystery  deeper  than 
the  strong  man's  riddle. 

So  is  Death  pure  and  clean,  as  is  the  dew  that  comes 
with  the  cool  night  when  the  sun  has  set ;  clean  and 
white  as  the  snow-tlakes  that  betoken  the  absolution 
which  Winter  gives,  shriving  the  earth  of  all  her  Sun>- 
mer  wantonness  and  excess,  when  only  the  trees  that 
yield  balsam  and  aromatic  fragrance  remain  green, 
breaking  the  box  of  precious  ointment  for  burial. 

In  this  view  also  is  restored  the  kinship  of  Dcaili 
with  Sleep. 

The  state  of  the  infant  seems  to  be  one  of  chronic 


i8  A  STUDY  OF  DEATH 

mysticism,  since  during  the  greater  part  of  its  days  its 
eyes  are  closed  to  the  outer  world.  Its 
^Death"*^  larger  familiarity  is  still  with  the  invisible, 
and  it  almost  seems  as  if  the  Mothers  of 
Darkness  were  still  withholding  it  as  their  nursling, 
accomplishing  for  it  some  mighty  work  in  their  proper 
realm,  some  such  fiery  baptism  of  infants  as  is  frequent- 
ly instanced  in  Greek  mythology,  tempering  them  for 
earthly  trials.  The  infant  must  needs  sleejD  while  this 
work  is  being  done  for  it ;  it  has  been  sleeping  since  the 
work  began,  from  the  foundation  of  the  world,  and  the 
old  habit  still  clings  about  it  and  is  not  easily  laid  aside. 
In  that  new  field  now  open  to  the  nascent  organism 
• — a  field  of  conscious  eflort  directed  toward  outward 
ends  —  there  is  exhaustion  and  expenditure.  There 
must  also  be  a  special  restoration,  and  this  is  given  in 
the  regular  and  measured  sleep  of  the  adolescent  and 
adult  organism,  corresponding  to  its  measured  energy. 
This  later  sleep  differs  from  that  of  the  infant  in  that 
it  is  the  relief  from  weariness,  the  winning  back  of  a 
spent  force.  In  the  main — that  is,  in  all  unconscious 
activities — the  burden  is  still  borne  by  an  unseen  power, 
but  there  is  also  a  burden  and  strain  felt  by  the  indi- 
vidual as  in  some  way  his  own,  appreciable  in  his  con- 
sciousness and  subject  to  his  arbitrary  determination — 
a  burden  which  he  may  voluntarily  increase  or  di- 
minish. The  loosening  of  the  strain  he  does  not  thus 
feel  to  be  of  his  own  ordering.  Sleep  comes  to  him  as 
does  the  night  whereto  it  seems  to  belong.  He  may 
resist  it,  but  it  will  come,  overtaking  even  the  sentinel 
at  his  post;  or,  again,  he  may  court  it  with  all  dili- 
gence and  it  shall  fly  away. 


THE   MYSTICAL    y IS/ON  19 

I'liat  whicli  we  have  been  considering  as  the  death 
that  is  in  every  moment  is  a  reaction  proper  to  life  it- 
self, waking  or  sleeping,  whereby  it  is  renewed,  sharing 
at  once  Time  and  Eternity — time  as  outward  form  and 
eternity  as  its  essential  quality.  Sleep  is  a  special  re- 
laxation, relieving  a  special  strain.  As  daily  we  build 
with  effort  and  design  an  elaborate  superstructure 
above  the  living  foundation,  so  must  this  edifice  nightly 
be  laid  in  ruins.  Sleep  is  thus  a  disembarrassment, 
the  unloading  of  a  burden  wherewith  we  have  weighted 
ourselves.  Here  again  we  are  brought  into  a  kind  of 
repentance  and  receive  absolution.  Sleep  is  forgive- 
ness. 

In  some  deeper  sense  sleep  is  one  with  death,  and  is 
proper  and  essential  to  life  itself.  Life  forever  sleeps 
beneath  the  masque  of  wakefulness,  as  it  forever  dies 
beneath  the  masque  of  phenomenal  existence.  The 
more  of  life,  the  more  of  death  and  the  more  of  sleep. 
Wakefulness  is  but  partial,  and  is  associated  more 
especially  with  age  than  with  youth.  Sleep,  also,  as 
we  know  it,  is  partial,  not  the  inmost  withdrawal  to  its 
chamber  of  eternal  rest.  For  the  recovery  of  man's 
strength  life  gives  him  this  partial  release.  A  saving 
hand  is  stretched  forth  out  of  the  darkness,  snatching 
him  from  the  world  and  locking  his  energies  in  sus- 
pense. The  world  of  conscious  experience  is  cut  off 
by  a  temporarily  impassable  chasm,  as  if  for  the  sleeper 
it  had  no  existence;  and  yet  it  is  only  the  desire  for 
that  world  which  is  being  renewed  in  this  darkness. 

That  which  we  commonly  call  the  dream,  whose  stuff 
is  borrowed  from  the  daylight,  occurs  only  on  the  out- 
skirts of  the  domain   of  sleep.      It   has   been   f.iiic  iitl 


20  A  STUDY  OF  DEATH 

that  in  a  deeper  dream,  never  registered  in  conscious 
memory,  there  may  be  a  return  to  the  associations  of 
former  lives,  but  this  deeper  dream — if  such  a  dream 
may  be — imageless  and  having  no  outward  moorings, 
must  also  be  inhospitable  to  reminiscences  of  any  pre- 
vious individual  existence.  Though  there  is  a  suspen- 
sion of  individual  activity,  there  is  still  the  confinement 
of  individuality  itself,  whose  integrity  is  never  disturbed 
in  any  normal  condition  of  life.  In  hypnotism  and  in- 
sanity there  may  be  a  schism  or  refraction  of  the  indi- 
vidual self,  and  even,  it  may  be,  the  resumption  of  an 
ancient  habit  and  familiarity — an  atavistic  reversion — 
but  not  in  sleep.  Hypnotism  seems  to  be  a  kind  of 
necromancy,  whereby  the  hidden  depths  of  conscious- 
ness are  brought  to  the  surface  at  the  bidding  of  out- 
ward suggestion.  But  in  normal  sleep,  whatever  re- 
sponse there  may  be  to  outward  suggestion,  there  is  no 
displacement  of  "the  abysmal  deeps  of  personality." 

Sleep,  in  this  special  sense,  is,  indeed,  akin  to  Death. 
But  he  stands  this  side  of  the  veil,  only  simulating  the 
offices  of  his  invisible  brother,  who  stands  at  the  very 
font  of  Life,  the  hierophant  of  the  Greater  Mysteries — 
those  of  the  eternal  life.  Death  calls  with  the  voice  of 
Life,  calls  from  the  central  source  to  the  remotest  cir- 
cumference of  the  universal  life,  calls  with  every  pulsa- 
tion of  that  life,  and  is,  indeed,  if  we  may  use  such  an 
image,  the  return  beat  of  the  pulse  of  the  All-Father's 
heart,  the  attraction  of  all  being  to  its  centre  of  rest  in 
that  Father's  bosom,  whatever  may  be  its  separate 
movements  in  the  cycles  of  Time  and  Space.  Sleep  is 
the  hierophant  of  a  Minor  Mystery,  folding  us  in  his 
mantle  of  darkness,  renewing  the  world's  desire,  recov- 


THi:  MYSTICAL    yiSION  2\ 

ering  Time.  Death  from  within  tlic  veil  instantaneously 
and  every  instant  transforms  life  from  its  very  source, 
recovering  Kternity.  Sleep  is  re-creation.  Death  is 
the  mighty  Negation,  whereby  all  worlds  vanish  into 
that  Nothing  from  which  all  worlds  are  made,  the  vast 
inbreathing  of  the  Spirit  of  God  for  His  ever-repeated 
fiat  of  Creation.  Sleep  suspends  the  individuality 
within  its  embodiment.  Death  shows  the  inmost  per- 
sonality in  a  divine  presence  —  that  angel  of  each  one 
of  us  which  forever  beholds  the  face  of  the  I'ather. 


( )ur  usual  reganl  of  death  is  one  wiiich  brings  into 
the  foreground  its  accidental  aspects,  not  pertinent  to 
its  essential  reality.  Even  our  grief  for  dear  ones  taken 
from  us  dwells  upon  our  loss,  upon  the  difference  to  us 
which  death  has  made,  and  so  our  attention  is  diverted 
from  the  transcendent  office.  On  the  hither  side  Death 
has  no  true  interpreter,  and  none  returns  from  its  true 
domain  to  be  the  witness  of  its  invisible  glory,  none 
save  the  risen  Lord.     lUtt  though  the  loved 

Ascendent 

ones  gone  cannot  return  to  us,  we  shall  go  MiniMmion 
to  them  ;  and  this  faith  which  follows  that 
which  has  vanished,  the  Christian  hope  of  resurrection, 
lifts  us  to  a  point  of  vision  from  which  it  is  possible 
for  us  to  see  death  for  what  it  really  is  as  invisibly  an 
ascending  ministrant,  whatever  frailty  and  decrepitude 
may  attend  the  visible  descent. 

The  pagan  idea  of  immortality  insisted  upon  tleath 
lessness.  The  Christian  faith  in  resurrecticm  gives 
death  back  to  life  as  essential  to  its  transformation. 
Death  is  swallowed  up  of  Life— included  therein.     .As 


22  A  STUDY  OF  DEATH 

"  Children  of  the  Resurrection,"  we  have  no  part  in 
what  is  commonly  called  death — that  visible  declen- 
sion and  dissolution  from  which  our  life  is  withdrawn, 
together  with  our  true  death,  leaving  the  grave  no 
victory. 

We  have  only  to  allow  ourselves  the  liberty  which 

science  takes,  to  arrive  at  this  view  as  a  philosophical 

conviction.     We   have,   indeed,  in   juvenes- 

A  Physical   j,g^(,g  ^  visible  illustration  of  an  ascent  of 

Analogue. 

life  upon  the  hidden  wings  of  death.  If 
man  were  distinguished  from  all  other  organisms  by 
the  possession  of  perpetual  youth,  we  who  are  accus- 
tomed to  associate  death  only  with  decline  might  pro- 
nounce him  deathless,  limiting  the  province  of  mor- 
tality to  those  organisms  whose  descent  maintains  his 
levitation.  Gravitation,  which  is  the  physical  symbol 
of  death,  was  before  Newton  not  suspected  as  a  cosmic 
principle.  Things  were  seen  to  fall  upon  the  earth, 
but  the  earth  was  not  seen  to  fall  toward  the  sun ; 
there  was,  indeed,  no  appreciable  evidence  of  such  a 
tendency.  Yet,  wholly  apart  from  such  visible  signs 
thereof,  Newton's  mystical  imagination  leaped  to  the 
truth  (afterward  reasonably  confirmed)  that  all  bodies 
are  falling  bodies ;  and  in  his  expression  of  this  truth 
he  made  gravitation  something  more  than  is  indicated 
in  the  outward  aspects  of  falling  and  weight — he  called 
it  an  attraction,  so  that  his  thought  became  the  mys- 
tical apprehension  of  an  unseen  but  universal  cosmic 
bond.  Thus  though  man  had  never  shown  any  visible 
signs  of  decline,  some  Newton  would  have  arisen  in 
the  physiological  field  and  asserted  his  mortality,  see- 


THE  MYSTICAL    VISION  23 

ing  tliat  in  youlli  death  is  swallowed  up  of  life,  as  grav- 
itation is  in  the  ascent  of  every  organism  and  in  the 
sustained  distance  from  the  sun  of  every  planet. 

Every  organism  has  an  action  and  reaction  quite  dis- 
tinct from  those  of  inorganic  substances,  and  which 
vanish  from  our  view  before  there  is  left  behind  merely 
"the  dust  that  riseth  up  and  is  lightly  laid  again."  In 
tiic  complex  human  life  there  is  much  more  that  van- 
ishes— the  passing  of  a  spiritual  as  well  as  a  physiolog- 
ical mystery,  far  withdrawn  from  outward  observation 
before  the  sceptical  physicist  or  pessimist  seizes  upon 
the  mere  residuum  or  precipitate  as  the  object  of  his 
fruitless  investigation — fruitless,  at  least,  as  having  anv 
pertinence  to  human  destiny.  The  body  which  Death 
leaves  behind  is  surrendered  to  that  inorganic  ciiemis- 
try  which  was  formerly  in  alliance  with  the  more  subtle 
actions  and  reactions  of  a  distinctively  human  life,  and 
to  the  physical  bond  of  gravitation  wliich  was  once  the 
condition  of  its  consistency  but  w  hich  now  brings  it  to 
the  dust.  Are  we  any  more  mystical  than  N'ewton  and 
Laplace  in  our  conviction  that  Death  as  a  part  of  the 
higher  life  is  its  unseen  bond — the  way  of  return  to  its 
source  ? 

In  the  cycle  of  every  living  organism  there  is  a  de- 
scending as  well  as  an  ascending  movement — age  as 
well  as  youth,  so  that  the  forces  to  which 
the  outward  structure  is  finally  abandoned  ^^^c^l'h!"' 
seem  to  have  upon  it  a  lien  anticipating 
their  full  jDossession.  This  is  simply  saying  that  tiic 
life  and  death  proper  to  the  organism  are  gradually 
withdrawing  before  tliey  together  wliolly  vanish,  Icav- 


24  A  STUDY   OF  DEATH 

ing  the  field  to  lower  life  and  death.  But  there  is  no 
claim  of  the  lower  upon  the  higher,  save  through  the 
surrender  made  by  the  higher  as  a  part  of  its  proper 
destiny.  The  signal  of  retreat  is  not  given  from  with- 
out but  from  the  inmost  chamber  of  the  citadel,  where 
reside  the  will  and  intelligence  which  determined  the 
distinctive  architecture  of  the  marvellous  superstruct- 
ure, and  which  hold  also  the  secret  of  its  ruin.  That 
secret  is  itself  genetic :  invisibly  it  looks  toward  palin- 
genesis— toward  the  higher  transformation  of  the  van- 
ishing life,  and  visibly  toward  the  outward  succession 
of  a  new  generation. 

So  Death  is  Janus-faced  :  toward  an  unseen  resur- 
rection, a  reascendent  ministration,  and  toward  the 
visible  resurgence  of  new  life  upon  the  earth,  to  which 
it  ministers  by  descent  and  which,  in  the  case  of  the 
highest  organisms,  it  sustains  by  prodigal  expenditure, 
during  a  period  of  helpless  infancy  and  dependent  ado- 
lescence. 

Nor  is  Death  to  be  denied  aught  of  the  grace  and 
beauty  of  this  descent  and  costly  sacrifice,  aught  of 
the  sweetness  of  expiration  —  the  incense  of  its  con- 
suming flame,  since  these  truly  belong  to  our  mysti- 
cal thanatopsis.  We  close  our  eyes  only  to  the  weak- 
ness and  decrepitude,  to  the  rust  and  ashes,  to  the 
mere  outward  accidents  that  disguise  the  might  and 
kindliness  of  Death, 


Tlie  mystery  of  Evil  is  bound  up  with  that  of  death, 
and  the   considerations    already  advanced   respecting 


THF.    MYSTIC^II.    VISION  .'5 

the  CM1C  are  alike  applicable  to  the  other.      I'lir  mere 
body  of  Kvil,  like  that  of  Dcatii.  is  the  after-part  of  a 
mystery  far  withdrawn  from  outward  obser- 
vation   into   the  unseen  depths  of   creative     ^''J*]"^ 

'  of  fcvil. 

purpose,  as  tlie  secret  of  winter  is  hidden, 
beneath  its  white  frosts  and  behind  its  dun  skies,  at 
the  very  roots  of  things  in  the  earth  and  in  tiie  heav- 
ens, and  is  not  disclosed  in  the  fallinjx  leaves  or  in  the 
cold  blast  that  sweeps  through  the  naked  forest.  In 
our  mystical  vision  Kvil  is  seen  to  be  essential  to  life 
— to  its  tropical  movement  of  Might  and  return,  hidden 
in  its  nascence  and  aspiration,  and  in  its  descent  iti- 
wardly  beautiful  ami  gracious,  looking  toward  renas- 
cence ;  being  in  reality  one  with  Death  in  its  intimate 
association  with  the  glory  that  is  unseen,  anil  with 
the  pathos  of  all  earthly  experience,  whatever  ntay  be 
its  outward  disguises  and  contradictions. 

Even  Sin,  which  is  the  sting  of  Death,  must  have  its 
reconcilement  with  eternal  life.  We  turn  from  the 
raggedness,  the  vileness,  and  the  emaciation  of  the 
Prodigal,  and  regard  only  the  unseen  bond  which 
brings  him  home,  while  we  hear  a  voice  saying  :  7///j"  my 
son  was  dcaii  and  is  alive  a^^ain,  lie  ivas  lost  anil  is  Jounil. 

Here,  too,  we  but  follow  the  mystical  imagination  of 
science,  seeing  in  the  spiritual  world  an  attraction  as 
mighty  and  as  effective  as  that  of  gravitation  in  the 
physical ;  and,  like  Newton,  we  turn  from  the  acci- 
dental appearance  of  falling  to  the  unseen  reality — the 
mystical  drawing  to  tiie  heavenly  centre  ;  we  turn  from 
the  weight  that  seems  a  burden  to  that  which  in  the 
new  interpretation  becomes  "an  eternal  weiglu  of 
glory." 


SECOND   BOOK 
NATIVE    IMPRESSIONS 


WHAl"  was  tlie  earliest  thought  of  Death?  The 
most  primitive  religious  cult  of  which  we  have 
any  record  was  the  worship  of  ancestors.  This  car- 
ries us  back  to  a  time  when  in  human  thought  there 
was  no  distinction  between  humanity  and  divinity. 
Man  was  a  god  in  disguise,  wearing  the  masque  of 
1  iine.  and    Death    was    the    unmasquing  of 

....  !•    ■  1  1         1   •  •  •  Native   Im- 

his  divinity.      Lvidently  this   ancient  imag-   predion  or 
inalion  was  in  no  wise  misled  by  the  dimin-      ""'h 
uendo  of  a  descending  movement  that  seemed  to  end 
in  utter  weakness;  the  vanishing  point  divided  appar- 
ent impotence  from  an  infinitude  of  power.     'I'o  pass 
wholly    into  the   unseen  was   to    re  -  enter  the   latL-nt 
ground  of  that  potency  of  which  the  visible  world  w.is 
the   manifestation  in   a   continuous    creation  ;   and,   in 
tiiis  restoration  of  iiigher  power,  there  was  no  oblitera- 
tion of  personality  but  rather  an  enhancement  of  it,  so 
that  tile  pulsations  of  the  universe  seemed  to  be  from 
stronger   hearts   than   beat   upon    the  earth. 
The  mighty  resurgence  of  life  in  dawns  and     M^Rinlcr 
spring-times   was  especiallv   and   most  inti-     «•■•»"«•><; 

.  .  '  .  l.iviiiR 

niately   associated    with    the  dead  —  it    was 
their    Kaster.      Thus    it   ha|)penetl   that  trees  and   in- 
deed all  plant  life  came  to  be  thought  of  as  mysticallv 
e.xpressing  the  newness  and  elastic  upspringing  of  life 


30  A  STUDY  OF  DEATH 

that  had  been  buried  out  of  sight,  buried  like  the  seed 
which  dissolves  for  germination,  sown  in  weakness 
and  raised  in  strength,  sown  in  corruption  and  raised 
in  incorruption.  The  golden  myrtle  bough  which  Virgil 
makes  ^neas  pluck  before  he  can  descend  to  Hades  is 
a  survival  of  the  old  association,  and  primitive  folk- 
lore abounds  in  similar  instances. 

The  serpent,  because  of  its  complete  exuviation  and 
brilliant  juvenescence  every  spring-time,  was  a  charac- 
teristic symbol  of  underworld  divinities,  who  presided 
not  only  over  the  nascence  of  all  things  but  over  all 
increase  and  fruitful  ness.  Even  in  the  later  mythol- 
ogy Pluto  was  the  god  of  wealth. 

The  reader  will  immediately  connect  all  this  with 
what  has  already  been  presented  as  the  mystical  vision 
of  Death,  and  ree  how  accordant  with  that  view  was 
man's  earliest  impression. 

The  modern  habit,  into  whose  texture  enter  so  many 
and  so  varied  strains  of  sentiment,  thought,  and  lan- 
guage, is  closely  wrapped  about  us,  and  is  quickly 
adopted  by  each  new  generation,  so  that  we  have  quite 
lost  the  native  sense  of  things  ;  and  even  so  much  of 
it  as  lingered  about  our  infancy  is  irrecoverable  by 
us  save  in  the  faintest  reminiscences.  The  scarcely 
awakened  sensibility  of  the  child  of  to-day  is  forth- 
with clad  in  raiment  ready-made  and  thrust  upon  it, 
and  confronts  elaborate  artificial  structures  that  con- 
fine it  in  many  ways,  while  in  others  it  is  stimulated 
by  suggestions  forcing  it  into  the  vast  perspective  of 
intellectual  and  cxsthetic  symbolism.  In  rare  instances 
is  the  child  saved  from  this  too  hasty  investiture  by 
fortunate  neglect  or  the  still  more  happy  circumstance 


N.^riri:    /.\//7v7;.S.S/U,V.S  3 1 

of  solitude  in  the  presence  of  Nature,  and  so  enters  into 
the  kin<;dom  of  tlie  naive  ;  and  in  all  cases  he  has  some 
protection  throuj^h  the  long,  slow  waves  of  feeling  that 
resist  invasion  and  fraction.  Hut  generally  these  mu- 
niments of  childhood's  native  realm  are  soon  broken 
down,  and  such  impressions  as  are  won  in  their  naked 
purity  are  rapidly  dissipated. 

It  is  difficult  for  us  to  abolish  our  perspective,  and 
such  impressionism  as  we  have  in  recent  art  and  liter- 
ature is  so  remote  from  native  sensibility  that  it  be- 
longs rather  to  the  end  than  to  the  beginning  of  things, 
to  they///  i/c-  sihie  than  to  a  primitive  age. 

Poe  and  Maeterlinck  are  far  removed  from  Homer, 
who  himself  belongs  to  a  period  representing  the  youth 
of  the  world,  not  its  infancy.  The  impression  of  death 
in  Poe's  poem  7'he  A'aT'c/i,  while  it  is  more  subtle  than 
that  given  in  Maeterlinck's  L Intruse,  is  not  naive  —  it 
is  the  reflex  of  experience.  The  native  intimation  is 
more  truly  conveyed  in  De  Quinccy's  infantile  associ- 
ation of  his  little  sister's  death  with  the  crocuses  than 
in  "the  silken,  sad,  uncertain  rustling  of  the  purple 
curtain  "  and  all  the  other  shuddering  sensations  in- 
spired by  Poe's  bird  of  ill-omen.  The  refrain  of  The 
Raven  is  "  Nevermore."  But  to  the  native  sensibility 
Death  is  not  an  alien  or  an  intruder;  nor  are  the  I'ow- 
crs  of  Darkness  unfriendly,  being  the  true  Kumenides, 
promising  always  bright  returns.  That  which  is  taken 
from  the  light  is  hidden  in  the  quickening  matrix.  'I'he 
last  gift  of  vanishing  life  is  a  seed,  suggesting  at  once 
burial  and  germination.  Thus  the  many-seeded  pome- 
granate was  the  pledge  between  Persephone  and  Plu- 
to.    A   sculptured    slab   recently  excavated    i"    A"!'  i 


32  A  STUDY  OF  DEATH 

shows  the  Eumenides  in  their  most  archaic  representa- 
tion, before  they  were  transformed  into  Furies.  They 
are  figured  as  benignant  goddesses,  each  holding  in 
one  hand  a  serpent  and  in  the  other  a  pomegranate, 
and  before  them  stand  a  young  husband  and  wife,  ex- 
pecting a  blessing. 

The  later  pagan  mythology  was  as  wide  a  divergence 
from  primitive  impressions  as  is  dogmatic  theology 
from  early  Christian  feeling.  The  rude  infancy  of 
humanity  left  of  itself  no  record,  and  there  is  little  to 
reward  our  most  diligent  quest  of  the  naive.  The 
savage  races  of  to-day  are  degenerate,  and  their  in- 
veterate simplicity  more  completely  veils  the  native 
sense  than  does  the  complex  environment  of  more  as- 
piring peoples ;  even  their  myths,  handed  down  by 
tradition,  lack  the  naivete  of  the  Indo-European.  The 
retention  of  the  native  in  indigenous  races,  in  those 
secluded  from  contact  with  others,  and  in  those  whose 
development  has  been  arrested,  holds  only  the  desic- 
cated semblance,  like  an  embalmed  mummy ;  and  the 
return  of  the  native  in  degenerate  races  is  no  true  res- 
toration, belying  and  contradicting  its  original,  being 
indeed  the  more  fallacious  because  of  a  fancied  re- 
semblance. The  wildness  of  an  old  garden,  once  cul- 
tivated but  now  come  to  decay,  bears  no  true  likeness 
to  the  wildness  of  native  flowers. 

The  archceological  researches  of  this  century  have 
given  us  some  glimpses  of  a  quasi-primitive  humanity, 
mere  fugitive  hints  which,  after  all,  are  not  more  sig- 
nificant than  those  furnished  by  old  Hebrew  scripture 
in  certain  passages  caught  and  held  there  from  some 
otherwise  long-forgotten  past. 


N.-iTtyF.    IMrRF.SSIONS  2>i 


II 

The  childhood  of  a  race  has  this  in  common  witii 
the  infancy  of  an  individual — that  its  larger  familiarity 
is  with  the  invisible  ;  it  is  naturally  mysti- 
cal. The  primitive  man  has  not  that  facile  Mys'lci'm. 
handling  of  things  which  takes  away  their 
wonder,  nor  that  ease  of  thought  and  speech  which 
provides  for  him  a  fund  of  loose  words  and  notions 
which  he  can  toss  to  and  fro  daringly  and  at  random. 
A  look,  a  spoken  word,  an  idea,  a  dream,  is  fatally  real 
to  him,  for  gooil  or  for  evil  ;  and  he  invests  everything 
about  him  with  an  ominous  signilicance.  Tokens  have 
not  become  common  coin.  11  is  industry  is  concerned 
with  living  things,  with  flocks  and  herds.  In  his  com- 
merce values  are  real,  not  merely  representative.  To 
him  Nature  lives  in  every  fibre  of  her  being,  nothing 
is  motionless  or  insensate  ;  it  is  a  Mowing  world.  No 
masterful  meddling  or  violence  on  his  part  disturbs 
this  impression.  The  growing  tree  is  not  to  him  some- 
tiiing  to  be  thought  of  simply  for  his  use  ;  the  forests 
are  as  free  from  his  invasion  as  the  clouds  above  them, 
and  the  streams  pursue  their  course  without  diversion 
or  disturbance.  There  is  nothing  to  break  the  living 
veil  of  illusion — a  shimmering  veil  of  lights  and  siiail- 
ows,  of  comings  and  goings,  pulsing  witii  the  beating 
heart  of  the  (Ireat  Mother,  whose  changeful  garment 
forever  hides  and  forever  discloses  the  charm  of  her 
wondrous  beauty.  In  tiie  free  play  of  this  sincere  life, 
where  his  naivete  answered  to  the  perennial  freshness 
of  the  world,  there  was   no  room   for  the  unreal   play. 

3 


34  A  STUDY  OF  DEATH 

No  sharply  defined  perspective  furnished  the  ground 
for  distinction  between  small  and  great,  high  or  low. 
There  could  be  no  idolatry  in  the  Alagnificat  of  a  wor- 
ship that  exalted  the  meanest  creature.  The  sublime 
superstition  which  lifted  the  lowest  phenomenon  to  the 
highest  plane  had  nothing  in  common  with  what  we 
call  superstition,  whose  omens  are  fortuitous  and  triv- 
ial, and  whose  signs  have  lost  their  significance.  To- 
temism  (as  we  understand  it),  fetichism,  witchcraft,  and 
sorcery  are  perfunctory  relics  of  what  was  once  a  living 
correspondence.  VVe  juggle  with  the  dry  twigs  of  what 
was  then  the  green  tree  of  life.  All  that  we  imagine 
as  possible  in  clairvoyance  was  more  than  realised  in 
the  primitive  sensibility,  not  as  yet  disturbed  and  con- 
fused by  those  facile  mental  processes  which  loosen 
the  bond  of  the  eternal  familiarity. 

When  appropriation  was  limited  to  living  uses,  the 
possession  of  things  was  not  tenacious  enough  to  im- 
prison the  soul  in  an  artificial  environment ;  and  thus 
inward  meanings  were  conserved  in  their  newness.  In 
this  regard  of  the  world  the  new  was  still  the  old,  the 
surprise  deepening  the  sense  of  familiarity.  Time  itself, 
in  the  childhood  of  the  world,  is  the  reflex  of  eternity. 

When  only  living  uses  were  regarded,  the  seizure  of 
man  upon  his  earthly  kingdom  was  eager,  swift,  and 
passionate,  but  the  reaction  was  quick ;  that  which 
was  grasped  was  readily  released.  It  is  only  against 
the  deep  backward  abyss  that  desire  is  a  longing, 
looking  forward  to  untrodden  ways,  to  a  tale  not  yet 
told,  and  yet  falling  back  into  the  darkness  as  upon 
the  infinite  source  of  its  strength,  with  unfaltering  faith 
in  resurgence. 


N.ATiyH.    IMPRESSIONS  35 


III 

It  is  peculiar,  therefore,  to  primitive  man  that  the 
backward  look  seems  dominant,  even  in  eager  forward 
movement.  Tenses  are  confused,  as  in  the  Hebrew 
the  past  is  the  prophetic  tense,  and  as  in 
our  Anglo-Saxon  the  term  7ihis  is  the  inten-  Backward  .md 
sive  form  of  the  present,  meaning  sti//  is,  ^^°T^^''^ 
and  so  is  caught  passing  into  the  future. 
That  of  the  stream  which  has  passed  is  that  which  has 
gone  forward.  In  this  primitive  paradox  and  confu- 
sion (which  is,  indeed,  characteristic  of  all  real  think- 
ing) we  have  the  feeling  of  a  flowing  world,  whose 
end  is  its  beginning,  as  the  ultimate  of  a  plant  is  its 
seed.  The  prominence  given  to  memory  and  tradition 
in  the  early  education  of  a  race  is  not  for  the  sake  of 
stability,  but  is  rather  the  regard  of  a  growing  tree  to 
its  roots,  whither  its  juices  perennially  return  ;  it  is 
fidelity  to  the  ground  of  quick  transformation.  This 
backward  look  is  evident  in  the  phrase  used  in  patri- 
archal times,  saying  of  a  man  when  he  died  that  he 
was  "gathered  unto  his  fathers."  Tiierefore  it  is  that 
among  primitive  peoples  we  find  no  allusion  to  a  future 
state.  The  idea  of  recession,  of  return,  dominated 
the  native  impression  of  all  tropical  movement.  Tlie 
blood  was  the  life,  and,  wherever  shed,  it  returned  to 
its  source,  as  the  waters  returned  to  their  springs. 
This  tidal  stream  or  life  current  of  Inimanity  (limited 
in  the  primitive  conception  to  the  family,  or  the  gius) 
found  its  way  back  to  the  well  of  its  issue.  Thus  kin- 
ship was  the  first  of  all  sacraments,  the  fountain  of  ail 


36  A   STUDY   OF  DEATH 

obligation,  so  that  all  sin  was  a  kind  of  blood-guilti- 
ness. 

To  this  natural  piety  was  joined  a  natural  humility. 
The  tree  of  life,  while  it  grows  upward  and  its  unfold- 
ing leaves  rejoice  in  the  light,  never  loses  its  fidelity  to 
the  darkness  nor  the  habit  of  its  descending  juices. 
The  intimate  association  of  man  with  the  earth  was 
the  largest  reality  in  primitive  faith,  Semitic  or  Aryan. 
The  earth  was  the  mother  of  all  living,  and  the  earliest 
idea  of  divine  as  of  human  kinship  was  one  deriving  it 
from  motherhood  rather  than  from  fatherhood.  Solar 
and  astral  worship  belonged  to  a  somewhat  later  de- 
velopment, when  human  thought  entered  upon  a  larger 
range,  taking  the  stars  into  its  counsels,  as  is  indicated 
in  the  term  cojisideraiion.  Desire,  in  its  earliest  direc- 
tion, was  earthward,  away  from  the  stars — desiderinm. 
The  sun  first  entered  into  the  sacred  drama  through 
his  association  with  the  earth,  through  a  divine  hus- 
bandry corresponding  to  the  human  ;  and  in  the  dark- 
ness this  association  was  continued  through  his  par- 
ticipation with  the  Great  Mother  (Isis,  Rhea,  Cybele, 
Ishtar,  Demeter,  or  by  whatever  name  she  was  known) 
in  the  dominion  of  the  underworld.  The  sun-god  was 
ever  a  ministrant  hero,  like  Heracles  undergoing  mighty 
labors,  and  finally  overborne  by  death,  becoming  a 
theme  for  such  passionate  lament  as  wailed  over  autumn 
fields  in  the  song  of  Linus  or  the  requiem  of  Adonis. 
But  in  the  Demetrian  worship  of  primitive  Attica 
even  this  pathos  was  associated  with  Persephone,  the 
daughter  of  the  Great  Mother — so  much  nearer  to  the 
heart  of  man,  in  these  earliest  mysteries,  was  the  earth, 
so  much  more  impressive  the  sorrow  of  maternity ! 


NATiyP.   IMPRESSIONS  37 

From  the  Powers  of  Darkness  and  not  from  those  of 
Light  was  friendly  aid  solicited  in  the  earliest  human 
worship.  The  I'itans  were  hrouglu  into  aUiancc  with 
man  before  he  lifted  his  eyes  in  prayer  to  Apollo. 
Divinity  had  its  home  in  the  earth,  and  its  haunts  in 
the  springs  whicii  quicken  the  ground.  Death  opened 
not  the  gates  of  heaven  ;  and  even  at  a  later  period, 
when  God  was  exalted,  as  the  Most  High,  into  the 
heaven  of  heavens,  the  translation  of  mijrtals  to  His 
presence  was  exceptional.  Paradise,  like  Sheol.  was 
beneath  the  waters,  and  it  was  possible  to  look  from 
one  into  the  other.  In  the  most  primitive  period  all 
men  alike  passed  to  Sheol  at  death,  the  idea  of  Para- 
dise, like  that  of  Klysium,  being  a  later  conception, 
when  penalties  and  rewards,  as  the  result  of  a  divine 
judgment,  came  to  be  associated  with  a  future  state. 
Indeed,  as  we  have  seen,  the  tlomain  to  which  death 
introduced  the  soul  was  thought  of  as  past  rather  than 
future — the  estate  of  the  fathers. 

It  is  not  easy  for  us  to  even  ideally  reproduce  a  pe- 
riod when  men  lived  in  a  primary  field  so  directly  vital 
that  their  uprightness  seemed  to  them  like  that  of  a 
tree,  a  living  righteousness,  having  no  consecpience 
save  in  its  fruit,  the  ultimate  of  which  is  expressed  in 
its  seed  ;  when  they  looked  upward  by  feeling  down 
ward,  and  forward  by  feeling  backward  ;  when  not  only 
the  springs  of  life  were  divine,  but  its  wlu)le  procedure 
so  entirely  of  divine  ordinance  that  to  think  of  it  as  .1 
probation  or  an  experiment  would  have  seemed  blas- 
phemous. The  sense  of  a  real  Presence,  holding  them 
by  an  inevitable  bond,  forbade  conceptions  quite  ger- 
mane to  modern  experience,  when  men  think  of  them- 


79G71 


38  A  STUDY  OF  DEATH 

selves  as  the  arbiters  of  their  destiny.  In  the  primi- 
tive thought  good  and  evil,  blessing  and  damnation, 
belonged  to  life,  as  such,  from  its  beginning,  even  as 
light  and  darkness,  pleasure  and  pain.  To  the  native 
impression  fear  is  as  natural  as  hope,  sensibility  itself 
having  its  beginning  in  tremor  and  irritation. 

This  view  of  primitive  man  is  quite  as  mystical  as 
was  the  primitive  man's  view  of  life,  and  is  largely  the 
product  of  our  imagination.  We  can  only  ideally  re- 
produce absolute  realism,  and  the  men  who  had  most 
absolutely  the  historic  sense  are  themselves  prehis- 
toric. The  native  man  is  as  much  a  mystery  to  us  as 
a  man  born  again  seemed  to  Nicodemus.  He  is  not 
the  man  we  know,  and  the  attributes  we  have  been 
ascribing  to  him  belong  rather  to  dormant  humanity 
than  to  a  progressive  order.  What  amazing  stupefac- 
tion of  abysmal  slumber  must  have  still  held  in  sus- 
pense all  the  proper  activities  of  manhood  in  a  being 
who  looked  down  to  his  God  ;  who  confounded  the 
divine  life  with  that  of  every  living  thing,  looking  in- 
deed upon  the  lower  animals,  and  even  upon  trees 
and  stones,  as  somewhat  nearer  divinity  than  was  him- 
self;  as  if  he  must  reverse  the  stages  of  his  own  ante- 
natal evolution,  in  order  that  through  the  mediate  se- 
ries he  might  find  the  way  to  Him  who  was  the  Most 
Low ! 

IV 

The  earliest  spiritual  lore  was  from  the  education  of 
sleep — of  this  very  sleep  which  in  the  typical  primitive 
era  withheld  man  himself,  as  in  every  new  generation 


NATiyP.    IMPRESSIONS  39 

it  withlujicis  the  infant,  froni  merely  outward  meanings 
and  uses,  and  within  the  reahn  of  a  divine 
nusterv.     What  man  was  to  be  in  his  mas-    .'^'"^  f'^""" 

■'  «  tion  ol  Sleep. 

tery  of  the  world  was  a  destiny  hidden  from 
himself — a  destiny  dominatinj:^  him  even  while  his  an- 
cient nurse  and  mother  clung  to  iiim  and  often  drew 
him  from  the  light  which  dazed  his  eyes  back  into  ])er 
helpful  darkness.  Indeed,  it  was  from  her  bosom  that 
his  strength  was  nourished  for  Hight ;  she  was  at  once 
Lethe  and  Levana,  giving  him  sleep  and  also  lifting  him 
into  the  light.  The  lusty  outward  venture  would  have 
seemed  too  perilous  but  for  her  helping  hand,  and  the 
visible  world  alien  and  fearsome  but  for  her  whispered 
names  of  new  shapes,  linking  them  with  an  older  wis- 
dom. His  infancy  was  thus  the  period  of  divination. 
Naturally,  therefore,  he  thought  of  death  as  divinisa- 
tion  —  not  as  an  exaltation  through  some  starward 
movement,  as  the  apotheosis  of  a  Cicsar  seemed  to 
the  Roman,  but  as  the  restoration  of  latent  powers 
through  descent  and  by  way  of  darkness. 

We  who  know  only  the  Hades  of  later  mythology, 
peopled  by  bloodless  shades,  weak  wanderers  shiver- 
ing between  two  worlds,  being  neither  wholly  alive  nor 
wholly  dead,  but  held  in  the  vain  suspense  of  an  empty 
dream,  forget  that,  in  the  earliest  thought  of  ukmi,  the 
dead  were  mightier  than  the  living.  The  worship  of 
ancestors  was  the  offspring  of  this  impression.  Men 
covenanted  with  the  dead  as  with  the  gods,  and  be- 
lieved that  they  thus  availed  of  the  larger  potency 
and  wisdom  of  the  departed.  I'he  sword  of  an  ances- 
tor in  the  hand  of  his  descendant  had  an  access  of  this 
superior  energy. 


40  A  STUDY   OF  DEATH 

In  this  time,  wlien  man  especially  leaned  to  the  dark- 
ness, he  found  the  way  to  unseen  springs  of  power,  an- 
cestral and  divine — a  direct  and  sure  way,  familiar  then 
but  afterward  forgotten  or  obscured.  The  spells  of 
sorcery  and  necromancy  were  the  perversion  of  this 
living  ritual  by  which  man  once  courted  and  won  the 
Invisible. 

All  rituals  grew  out  of  this  primitive  ritual,  known  as 
the  Way,  but,  losing  the  living  reality,  degenerated  into 
meaningless  routine.  The  profound  meaning  attached 
to  the  Way  in  all  Oriental  religions  represents  inade- 
quately the  original  meaning.  The  plant  knows  the 
way  to  the  water-springs.  The  habit  of  animal  instinct, 
repeated  from  generation  to  generation,  implies  the 
divining  of  its  way  of  correspondence.  The  ancient 
gathering  of  "  simples  "  was  the  following  of  a  path  as 
sure  and  as  mystically  familiar  as  that  which  led  to 
the  means  of  nourishment.  This  Way  began  with  the 
beginning  of  an  organism,  of  an  embodiment  whereby 
the  desire  of  the  spirit  became  the  desire  of  the  flesh. 
The  hunger  which  shaped  the  mouth  informed  it  with 
a  selective  wisdom,  whereby  it  found  its  response  in  a 
world  it  had  always  known,  being  outwardly  stimulated 
and  helped  by  a  world  which  had-  always  known  it. 
The  familiarity  whereby  Desire  finds  its  Way  in  the 
visible  world,  blindly  recognising,  courting,  and  winning 
its  respondents,  which  on  their  part  are  also  seeking 
and  finding  it  with  the  same  blind  insistence,  is  nour- 
ished in  the  darkness  that  is  the  background  of  all  ex- 
istence in  time  and  in  the  world.  Thus  the  Eternal 
Bridegroom  is  met,  in  all  His  myriad  disguises,  in  the 
realm  of   His  beautiful   illusions;  but   in   death,  when 


NATIVE   IMPRESSIONS  4« 

one  turns  back  into  the  darkness,  all  disguises  are  laid 
aside  and  He  is  seen  face  to  face.  And,  as  consub- 
Stantiality  is  the  ground  of  correspondence  in  the  visi 
ble  world.  Death  is  an  awaking  into  His  likeness. 

Such  was  the  native  impression  of  Death.  The  eva- 
niiion  from  the  light  into  the  darkness,  recovering 
eternity,  could  not  be  for  the  primitive  man  the  occa- 
sion of  doubt  or  solicitude  ;  it  was  the  ground  of  faith, 
througii  a  covenant  older  than  time. 

Whenever  any  remarkable  revelation  was  to  be  made 
to  man  he  was  brought  into  "  a  deep  sleep."  The 
ordinary  occultation  of  the  world  in  night  and  sleep  be- 
came for  him  liie  supreme  season — suprema  tntipcstas 
did,  as  it  was  phrased  in  the  okl  Latin  sacred  books. 
Sleep  was  the  undoing  of  all  in  man  that  grew  in  the 
daylight,  and  a  committal  of  him  to  invisible  powers 
which  wrought  in  him  their  work,  and  from  which  there 
was  an  inliux  of  divine  wisdom  : 

/;;  (/  dnuim,  in  a    I'iiion  of  thf  Xij^hi, 

H'htii  dfep  slcfp  falleth  upon  nun. 
In  slumberin^s  upon  the  bed ; 

Then  he  openeth  the  ears  of  men 
And  sealeth  their  instruction. 

That  he  may  -withdiaw  man  ftvm  his  purpose. 
And  hide  pride  from  man. 

In  this  occultation  the  sense  of  reality  was  enlarged 
rather  than  diminished,  raised  to  a  higher  power,  and  a 
new  world  was  created  in  a  truer  vision.  The  human 
was  so  intimately  blended  with  the  divine  that  the  dis- 
tinction between  them  was  blurred,  even  as  in  death 
this  distinction  was  completely  lost.  Accordingly  the 
intimatitMis  of  tin-  dre.un  were  accepted  as  divine. 


42  A  STUDY   OF  DEATH 

Wholly  apart  from  the  mystery  of  sleep  and  from  the 
divine  intimations  of  the  dream,  there  was  for  man  in 
this  occultation  the  beginning  of  a  spiritual  phitosophy. 
Sleep  not  only  gave  man  a  standing  in  a  nearer  divine 
presence,  but  the  fact  that  life  and  thought  went  on 
when  the  body  was  motionless  developed  a  conscious- 
ness of  the  human  soul  as  independent  of  the  visible 
world,  and  even  of  all  that  he  ordinarily  called  himself. 
There  was  movement  which  was  not  locomotion,  and  a 
free  play  of  mental  activity  involving  an  indefinite  ex- 
pansion of  time.  If  there  had  been  no  night,  a  vague 
and  fragmentary  spiritual  consciousness  might  have 
arisen  from  shadows  and  echoes.  But  in  sleep  the  ab- 
straction was  complete,  spontaneous,  and  inexplicable, 
and  there  was  added  to  the  independent  existence  of 
images  their  independent  motion  ;  there  was  a  moving 
drama,  wherein  the  self  could  become  others,  still  re- 
maining itself,  being  at  the  same  time  actor  and  spec- 
tator. There  was  vision  with  closed  eyes,  and  hearing 
as  with  an  inward  ear ;  while  the  immobility  of  the 
bodily  members  seemed  to  be  not  merely  the  veil  be- 
tween two  worlds,  but  the  very  condition  of  free  psy- 
chical activity. 


When  the  habit  of  abstraction,  thus  begun,  became 

facile,  the  dream  began  to  lose  its  importance  as  an 

especially  real  psychical  operation  ;  and  its 

The  Awaking.       ....  i  -i  i 

divme  mtnnacywas  loosened,  until  at  length 
the  easily  shifting  notion  displaced  the  intense  reality. 
A  corresponding  change  affected  the  entire  human  re- 


NATURE   IMPRESSIONS  4^ 

j^ard  of  the  world.  Outward  ends  began  to  obscure 
inward  meanings  ;  the  primary  became  secondary ;  the 
eternal  familiarity  yielded  more  and  more  to  the  tem- 
poral; that  which  had  been  the  most  intimate  became 
alien.  .Man  was  fully  awake,  realisinj:^  his  peculiar  des- 
tiny as  a  progressive  conscious  being.  His  philosophy, 
passing  out  of  native  impressionism,  became,  through 
notional  abstraction,  the  ground  of  the  exact  sciences ; 
his  language  passed  into  its  secondary  meanings;  loose 
thinking  came  to  be  called  close  and  rigid,  as  confined 
within  definite  limitations  ;  art,  in  like  manner,  passed 
from  its  purely  vital  field  into  that  of  representa- 
tion, of  images  and  similitudes;  the  sacrament  of  kin- 
ship was  weakened  by  the  e.xpansion  of  the  family  into 
wider  communities  ;  and  humanity  flew  out  of  its  chrysa- 
lis, as  a  planet  from  its  nebulous  m.itrix.  The  dead  and 
the  divine  became  remote,  no  longer  in  immediate  cor- 
responilence,  but  visiting  men  as  ghosts  or  as  angels — 
in  either  case  still  retaining  their  old  divine  designa- 
tion as  Klohim.  The  human  cycle,  distinct,  self-con- 
scious, and  self-sufficient,  sought  completeness  in  the 
visible  world,  evading  and  denying  the  eternal.  The 
conscious  regard  was  mainly  forward  and  upwani, 
spurning  the  roots  of  the  I'rce  of  Life,  looking  rather 
to  the  fruit  of  the  'J'rce  of  Knowledge.  (lod  had  re- 
moved from  His  world  to  His  heaven.  Sheol  was  in- 
habited by  weaklings,  and  death  became  in  human 
thought  the  dread  descent  into  that  shadowy  realm  of 
imjKjtence  and  insignificance. 

'I'he  Heroic  age  as  represented  in  Homer's  Epics — 
especially  in  the  Odyssey — had  already  lost  the  native 
sense  of  the  invisil^le  world  and  all  homelv  familiaritv 


44  A  STUDY   OF  DEATH 

therewith.  The  Hades  of  the  Odyssey  is  a  world  of 
gloom  into  which  the  glories  of  the  earth  pass  as  into 
a  garden  of  faded  flowers.  When  Odysseus,  still  be- 
longing to  the  world  of  the  living,  is  permitted  to  enter 
the  confines  of  this  awful  realm,  a  throng  of  pallid 
spectres  presses  forward  with  insane  hunger  to  drink  the 
blood  of  his  propitiatory  sacrifice.  He  sees  Achilles, 
and  the  burden  of  his  old  comrade's  speech  with  him 
is  envy  of  the  joys  of  life  in  the  cheerful  light  of  clay. 
The  western  sea  bordering  this  underworld — the  ele- 
ment of  water  itself  being  associated  with  dissolution — 
was  the  haunt  of  Gorgons  and  Chimceras,  of  Circe  and 
the  Sirens,  whose  charms  and  sorceries  wiled  men  to 
nameless  degradation  and  ruin.  Homer's  Poems  and 
the  great  Hindu  Epic — -the  Mahabarata  —  show  the 
Aryan  race  at  a  much  more  advanced  stage  of  civilisa- 
tion than  is  generally  supposed  ;  and  one  important 
evidence  of  this  is  the  fact  that  already  the  Powers  of 
Darkness  have  been  submerged  and  are  held  in  awful 
abeyance.  The  Eumenides  have  already  been  trans- 
formed into  avenging  Furies. 

The  Babylonian  conception  of  the  underworld  wxs 
even  more  degenerate  from  the  primitive  idea.  Our 
first  historic  acquaintance  with  Phoenicia  and  Chaldea, 
as  with  Egypt,  is  at  a  time  when  these  countries  are  al- 
ready famous  for  mighty  cities,  engaged  in  commerce 
and  in  manifold  industries  ;  and  to  their  peoples  the 
thought  of  the  world  beneath  the  waters  was  like  that  of 
a  vast  necropolis,  whose  dusty  ways  are  untroubled  as 
in  the  suspense  of  an  endless  dream.  Yet  there  was  no 
contrasting  idea  of  heaven  as  a  possible  abode  of  mor- 
tals after  death  ;  all  alike  must  pass  from  the  life  of  a 


NATiyii  IMf'HHSSIONS  45 

sunlit  world  to  this  realm  of  shadows.  The  earthly 
aspirations  of  living  men,  in  the  full  tide  of  youthful 
strength  engaging  every  energy  in  the  accomplishment 
of  definite  results,  were  jealous  of  invisible  powers, 
whose  work  seemed  a  negation  of  their  own  positive 
constructions. 

This  apparent  denial  of  Death  was  an  illusion  nour- 
ished by  the  very  powers  which  it  sought  to  thrust  into 
outer  darkness  and  oblivion — nourished  especially  in 
the  heart  and  conscious  thought  of  man,  because  it  was 
his  peculiar  destiny  to  express  to  the  uttermost  the 
eartlily  mastery  and  the  temporal  familiarity  ;  to  lose 
himself  in  the  monuments  of  his  art.  whose  duration  in 
time  seemed  a  blazoned  contradiction  of  eternity  ;  and, 
like  one  in  a  dream,  to  be  buried  in  his  terrestrial 
economies. 

The  denial  began  with  the  first  conscious  progres- 
sion— the  first  lapse  from  instinct  into  rational  proc- 
esses, but  it  was  completed  only  when  man  became 
wholly  absorbed  in  his  Time-dream,  when,  with  eyes 
closed  to  the  invisible  world,  he  came  to  think  of  that 
world  as  itself  dormant  and  oblivious.  The  Eternal 
taking  upon  itself  the  masque  of  Time,  so  man,  one 
always  with  the  Paternal,  became  a  part  of  the  mas- 
querade, contributing  to  its  delicious  anil  painful  be- 
wilderment through  disguises  of  his  own,  in  the  deep- 
est sense  inhabiting  the  world.  Anil  Death  was  tlie 
master  of  the  revels.  In  his  secret  heart  is  loilged 
the  power  of  a  resurgent  life,  even  as  it  is  Lethe  who 
is  the  mother  of  Memory.  He  it  is — this  invisible 
Angel  of  Life — who  out  of  the  rich  darkness  puts  forth 
the  blade  and  bud  and  babe  ;  all  the  fresh  and  tender 


46  A  STUDY  OF  DEATH 

luxuriance  of  growth  is  but  the  imagery  of  his  abun- 
dance. His  potence  is  the  hidden  spring  of  youth.  But 
also  it  is  he  who  is  confronted  at  every  turn  as  a  smil- 
ing wrestler  inviting  to  conflict;  he  who  uplifts  appear- 
ing to  the  outward  vision  as  one  who  threatens  a  fall 
— an  archer  inciting  to  protection  against  his  own  ar- 
rows, to  wariness  against  his  waiting  destruction.  To 
man  lost  in  the  things  of  time,  he  who  is  the  Deliverer 
appears  as  Gaoler — he  who  alone  faces  The  Real  as 
the  Kins  of  Shadows  ! 


VI 

But  to  the  primitive  man — at  least  to  our  imaginary 

type,  never,  indeed,  in   any  record,  known   to   us   as 

wholly  free  from  the  outward  entanglement 

irtiie  ot    — Death  and  the  underworld  were  not  held 

Annihilation. 

as   thus    irreconcilably   alien,   nor   as    thus 
shorn  of  their  might. 

The  native  impression,  on  the  visible  side,  regarded 
the  universe  as  a  living  reality — the  diversification  of 
the  divine  life — and,  on  the  invisible  or  vanishing  side, 
felt  the  elastic  tension  and  expansion  of  that  life  as  a 
vaster  reality.  This  impression  was  not  confined  to 
the  term  of  an  individual  existence  begun  at  birth 
and  ending  in  death,  but  embraced  all  appearance 
and  disappearance,  having  a  sense  of  constant  pul- 
sation, in  which  there  is  always  a  coming  and  go- 
ing, as  in  an  ever- changing  garment  that  is  being 
woven  by  a  shuttle  now  darting  into  the  light  and 
then  back  into  the  darkness.  This  reflex  move- 
ment, as  connected  with  vanishing  things  —  with   all 


NATIVF.    IMPRESSIONS  47 

things  as  momently  vanishing  —  spontaneously  re- 
bounded to  the  central  source,  and  was  not  interrupted 
or  distracted  by  any  too  fixed  regard  of  the  external 
world,  but  rather  took  that  world  with  it  on  its  refluent 
tide,  bathing  it  forever  anew  in  the  pristine  font  of  an 
eternal  life. 

In  the  dissolving  view  disappearance  was  not  merely 
negative ;  it  was  more  positive  than  appearance.  It 
was  from  the  ground  that  Abel's  blood  cried  unto 
(he  Lord.  Something  of  this  feeling  remains  among 
the  Chinese,  who  having  written  their  prayers  upon 
paper,  then  burn  the  paper,  having  more  faith  in  the 
obliteration  than  in  the  literal  expression.  There  is 
marvellous  virtue  in  annihilation.  The  mystery  of  the 
universe  can  be  nakedly  disclosed  only  in  the  death  of 
the  universe ;  nevertheless  it  is  the  mystery  of  every 
moment  of  every  living  thing  — lost  in  the  life  of  that 
moment  and  recovered  in  its  death. 


VII 

We   dwell    upon   this    native    sense    of  the  wonder 
which  life  has  in  its  fresh  and  radiant  appearances  and 
its  more   marvellous  vanishings,  because  it 
helps  us  to  see  how  natural  is  that  transcen-  ^'/'Keai'y** 
dental  mysticism   which  by  elastic  rebound 
overleaps  the  apparent  finality  of  death  :  which  finds 
in  the  point  of  rest  the  initiation  of  a  miraculous  mo- 
tion, so  that  zero  becomes  the  symbol  of  the  Infinite; 
which  has  such  faith  in  Life  as  to  give  no  credence  to 
its  apparent  diniiiuitiuns  as  signs  of  weakness,  seeing 


48  A   STUDY  OF  DEATH 

in  them  rather  the  intimations  of  some  mighty  trans- 
formation already  begun.  Such  a  miracle  was  wit- 
nessed in  an  eclipse  of  the  sun — especially  in  a  total 
eclipse,  when  complete  annihilation  seemed  to  be  fol- 
lowed by  renascence. 

It  is  very  difficult  for  us  to  even  imagine  this  native 
mystical  apprehension  of  an  eternal  life.  We  have  the 
impression  in  some  degree  awakened  in  us  by  vast  bar- 
ren places,  by  the  immobility  of  landlocked  waters,  by 
the  silence  of  deep  forests,  and  in  seasons  of  unbroken 
solitude.  It  is  not  a  sense  of  lifelessness  in  these  situ- 
ations, but  of  deeper  life  suggested  through  the  ab- 
sence of  color  and  sound  and  motion,  which  are  usually 
so  prominent  in  our  perspective.  In  the  outward  silence 
the  inward  Voice  is  heard.  To  us,  perhaps,  the  Voice 
seems  alien,  but  to  the  primitive  man  it  was  that  of  a 
Familiar.  We  shrink  from  intimations  which  he  court- 
ed, his  solicitation  having  become  for  us  a  dread  solici- 
tude ;  and  the  Way  frequented  by  him — kept  open  be- 
tween him  and  his  ancestral  home — we  seek  to  close, 
setting  a  seal  upon  every  sepulchre,  barring  out  the 
revenaut.  In  spiritualism  and  occultism  we  attempt 
an  awkward  coquetry  with  vanished  souls — and  in  this 
casual  necromancy  how  antique,  indeed,  seem  our  cor- 
respondents, even  the  nearest  of  them  !  In  insanity 
there  appears  to  be  an  abnormal  restoration  of  the 
atavistic  channel.  How  significant,  then,  it  is  to  note 
that  there  was  a  time  when,  in  a  sane  mood  and  with- 
out jugglery  of  any  sort,  the  living  had  communion  with 
kindred  souls  departed  —  a  cherished  intimacy  which 
made  the  darkness  friendly  and  as  fragrant  as  the 
breath  of  love,  and  which  with  resistless  charm  drew 


NATiyi-:  IMrRliSSIONS  49 

them  within  tlic  shelter  of  oversliadowiiipj  winj;s.  with 
in    the    circle    of    fatiierly    and    motherly    mij^hl    and 
bounty. 

VIII 

The  naturalness  of  this  mysticism  distin;^uishes  it 
from  medi;wal  and  modern  mysticism.  In  the  primi- 
tive view,  while  the  unseen  was  the  larirer 

•  Ml  Mcdii-val 

reality,  the  visible  world  was  not  less  real,  and  Modem 
nor  was  the  fresh  and  eager  desire  for  that  •'>'*'"•■"•'" 
world  in  any  way  suppressed  or  deprecated.  Its  sul>- 
lime  negation,  whereby  that  which  passed  from  vision 
entered  into  a  new  and  greater  glory,  had  no  like- 
ness to  the  Buddhistic  Nirwana,  though  it  may  have 
been  identical  with  the  earliest  meaning  of  Nirwana  as 
entertained  by  the  primitive  Aryan.  Modern  religious 
mysticism  is  not  content  with  the  natural  transcendency 
of  a  transforming  life,  and  is  therefore  disposed  to  sac- 
rifice Nature  to  the  supernatural,  so  that  its  consid- 
eration of  the  external  order  of  things,  whether  as  di- 
vinely or  humanly  ordained,  falls  into  the  slough  of 
pessimism.  Only  the  blood  that  leaps  into  the  quick 
and  full  pulsation  of  earthly  life  can  have  an  elastic  re- 
bound to  its  eternal  font.  The  sense  of  fatherhood 
and  motherhood,  imperatively  linked  with  the  sacra- 
ment of  kinship  among  all  primitive  peoples,  could  not 
have  tolerated  the  Tolstoian  view  of  marriage.  Only 
artificial  uses  were  excluded  from  primitive  life,  and 
even  these  lay  ahead  of  it  as  inevitable  in  the  natural 
course  of  progress  ;  but,  the.se  not  yet  existing,  the 
abuses  of  convention  prompted  no  revolt  liki-  lli.it 
which  enters  into  modern  speculation. 


50  A  STUDY  OF  DEATH 

The  denunciation  of  selfhood  which  is  the  key-note 
of  all  modern  mysticism  could  have  had  no  place  in  a 
primitive  estate,  in  which  selfishness  had  no  expression 
save  as  the  natural  postulancy  of  childhood — a  great 
hunger  to  which  all  things  responded.  The  need  most 
real  was  that  of  fellowship.  Exiled  from  his  fellows, 
man  in  the  presence  of  Nature  experiences  a  strange 
sensation.  We  say  that  a  man  is  born  alone  and  that 
he  dies  alone;  but  he  is  born  of  his  kind  and  to  his 
kind  he  dies,  so  that,  in  either  case,  fellowship  is  em- 
phasised. But,  in  human  embodiment,  confronting 
the  physical  world,  unsustained  by  human  companion- 
ship, his  loneliness  is  supremely  awful,  and,  if  pro- 
longed, would  in  time  deprive  him  of  reason  and 
speech  and  of  every  distinctively  human  characteristic. 
Nature,  to  the  solitary  individual  man,  is  dumb  and  her 
ministration  meaningless.  In  this  situation  he  is  mor- 
ally and  spiritually  a  nonentity  ;  he  can  have  neither 
selfhood  nor  communion.  He  is  not  a  normal  animal, 
but  defective,  degenerate  man.  The  isolated  man  is  a 
man  wholly,  uselessly,  irretrievably  lost.  Neither  life 
nor  death  has  for  him  any  meaning,  and  to  him  God 
can  in  no  way  be  revealed.  He  is  nourished  to  no 
purpose,  increased  for  no  proper  function,  and  even  his 
diminution  and  disappearance  seem  anomalous.  If 
we  could  suppose  him  to  have  never  had  human  fel- 
lowship, he  would  be  even  physically  incomplete,  a  lost 
half  of  a  being,  the  dominant  system  of  his  cellular  or- 
ganism— an  impcriiim  in  wiperio — having  no  response 
and  mocking  his  empty  arms,  however  much  of  the 
world  they  might  hold,  despising  his  pain  and  travail 
as  utter  vanity.     Life  would  have  no  romance  of  its 


N.4TiyF.    IMPRESSIONS  51 

adventure  and  the  universe  no  prize  in  its  treasure- 
house  worth  the  winninj^  or  for  whose  loss  one  might 
grieve.  Only  he  who  loves  can  weep,  and  man  loves 
not  the  world  nor  self  until  he  has  loved  his  kind. 

N  it  selfishness,  then,  but  sympathy  is  man's  native 
feeling.  Only  in  a  fellowship  can  he  find  himself,  only 
in  a  human  kinship  the  divine.  The  cosmic  prepara- 
tion, outside  of  himself  and  in  his  own  organism,  is  not 
for  an  individual  but  for  humanity;  it  is  the  founda- 
tion of  loving  fellowship  and  broad  enough  for  uni- 
versal brotherhood  ;  indeed,  the  operations  of  the  phys- 
ical world  as  related  to  man  can  neither  have  their 
full  effect  nor  be  fully  understood  save  in  such  a  broth- 
erhood. The  preparation  is  for  love.  The  very  di- 
versity of  individuation,  the  apparently  sealed  envelope 
of  separate  embodiment,  forbidding  fusion,  stimulate 
association  and  enhance  its  charm.  The  first  man- 
child  born  into  this  fellowship  may  become  his  broth- 
er's murderer;  ambition  may  produce  dissension  and 
promote  violence,  and  the  very  closeness  of  family  antl 
tribal  relationship  may  lead  to  conflict  with  other 
equally  solid  leagues,  and  so  appear  dissociative ;  but, 
in  the  end,  crime,  oppression,  and  war  will  compel 
larger  solidarity  and  ampler  freedom.  The  enlarge- 
ment may  substitute  conventional  for  natural  bonds, 
but  within  the  scope  of  the  widest  convention  there 
will  remain  the  family  on  a  surer  basis,  and  the  social 
activities  in  their  freest  sympathetic  expansion  ;  and 
thus  Love  that  seemed  to  be  hidden  will  remain  lord  of 
human  hearts. 

In  any  period,  therefore,  of  iuiman  progress,  selfhood 
is  but  the  reflex  of  fellowship,  first  human    and    then 


52  A  STUDY  OF  DEATH 

divine,  or  rather  botli  in  one.  A  subjective  mysticism, 
contemplating  as  possible  the  exclusion  of  selfhood  by 
an  influx  of  divine  life,  is  irrational.  It  is  the  expan- 
sion of  selfhood,  the  deepening  of  its  capacity  through 
its  exhaustive  demand  upon  all  ministrants,  human 
and  divine,  that  at  the  same  time  provides  a  guest- 
chamber  for  the  Lord  and  an  abundant  treasure-house 
to  be  exhausted  in  ruinous  expenditure  for  the  service 
of  man  —  a  service  most  effective  when  it  most  truly 
expresses  selfhood. 

Since  all  religious  mystics,  of  whatever  creed  and  of 
whatever  race,  have,  from  the  beginning  of  a  philosophic 
era,  agreed  in  this  assault  upon  selfhood,  their  unani- 
mous expression  commands  respect.  The  general  as- 
sent to  a  proposition,  as,  for  example,  that  the  sun  re- 
volves about  the  earth,  does  not  prove  the  truth  of  the 
proposition,  in  the  absolute  sense,  but  it  does  indicate 
a  general  impression  as  its  real  and  true  basis.  What 
impression,  then,  is  it  that  has  been  so  generally  enter- 
tained as  to  be  the  real  basis  of  this  mystical  revulsion 
from  selfhood  ?  The  word  mysticism  is  from  the  Greek 
muesis,  the  dosi?ig  of  the  eyes — that  is,  one  turns  from  the 
sensible  appearance,  shuts  his  eyes  to  the  visible  world, 
in  order  to  see  true.  Some  fallacy,  therefore,  some  in- 
evitable delusion,  is  conveyed  to  the  soul  through  the 
appearances  of  things  to  the  eye  of  sense,  something 
which  must  be  corrected,  even  reversed,  in  the  spiritual 
vision.  The  spiritual  is  thus  opposed  to  the  natural, 
even  as  the  Creator  has  a  perfection  as  opposed  to  the 
imperfection  of  the  creature.  The  universe  stands  in 
contradiction  to  its  source — the  natural  manifestation 
opposed  to  the  spiritual  principle.      How  readily  has 


NATiyii   IMPRI-SSIONS  53 

this  radical  distinction  between  the  creature  and  the 
Creator  commended  itself  to  the  prophet  and  spiritual 
philosopher  of  all  ages  !  "  Vea,  the  stars  are  not  pure 
in  His  sight.  How  much  less  man  who  is  a  worm  !" 
"There  is  none  good  but  one."  If  a  man  turns  from 
the  entire  visible  world  to  such  truth  as  can  be  only 
spiritually  discerned,  shall  he  not  also  turn  from  him- 
self, making  the  vaslation  complete.^  If  nature  is  an 
(^i/is/<i/uiis,  misleading  him,  how  much  more  deceptive 
the  imaginations  of  his  own  heart ! 

There  is  in  this  impression  the  deepest  of  all  truth 
both  as  to  insight  and  as  to  action:  as  to  insight,  be- 
cause it  is  the  comprehension  of  evil  as  associated  with 
all  manifestation,  divine  and  human  ;  as  to  action,  be- 
cause it  is  a  recognition  of  the  necessity  of  repentance 
and  regeneration  to  all  the  transformations  that  have 
ever  been  or  ever  shall  be  wrought  in  man  or  in  the 
world,  so  that  the  universe  itself  is  forever  being  re- 
pented of  and  created  anew— the  new  creation  being  a 
redemption. 

The  truth  thus  stated  brings  the  impression  resting 
upon  it  into  accord  with  the  native  and  natural  mysti- 
cism ;  the  evasions  and  perverted  expressions  of  it 
have  reflected  the  errors  of  existing  systems — such  er- 
rors as  were  illustrated  in  Oriental  dualisms  (most  no- 
tably in  Manicheism),  in  Neo- Platonic  speculations, 
like  those  of  Philo  Judanis  concerning  creation  as 
the  work  of  good  and  evil  angels,  and  in  much  of  med- 
ieval and  modern  Christian  theology.  All  these  er- 
rors illustrate  the  fact  that  philosophy,  even  as  a  part 
of  theology,  is  in  its  development  not  exempt  from  the 
evil  which  is  inextricably  involved  in  all  manifestation, 


54  ^  STUDY   OF  DEATH 

and  so  is  something  to  be  itself  forever  repented  of 
and  born  again  ;  these  errors  being  a  contradiction  of 
the  spiritual  principle  from  which  they  are  the  depart- 
ures. 

The  central  principle  of  all  systems,  divine  or  hu- 
man, impels  the  departure  and  demands  the  return, 
thus  involving  the  destruction  of  every  edifice  that  is 
builded;  it  gives  into  the  light  and  takes  into  the 
darkness ;  it  determines  the  maturing  strength,  the  te- 
nacity of  structures,  the  consistency  of  systems,  and  it 
determines  the  dissolution  also  of  all  embodiments, 
for  renewal  and  transformation.  He  who  would  for- 
ever hold  to  the  structure,  losing  himself  therein,  and 
looking  not  to  the  source  of  life,  is  in  prison,  and  for 
him  the  illusions  of  the  light  become  delusions  ;  but, 
on  the  other  hand,  he  who  turns  from  his  dwelling 
save  for  new  and  brighter  dwelling,  who  seeks  the  dark- 
ness save  for  the  renewal  of  desire,  who  in  expecta- 
tion of  immortality  denies  resurrection  as  fresh  em- 
bodiment, sets  his  face  against  the  mortal  hope,  and 
for  him  there  is  only  the  prospect  of  some  level  world 
in  which  there  is  no  world  to  come.  But  Life  knows 
no  such  sterile  issue,  and  into  whatsoever  chamber 
the  Bridegroom  shall  enter,  again  he  shall  go  forth 
therefrom,  rejoicing  as  the  strong  man  to  run  a  race  ! 

The  ultimate  mysticism  will  be  that  of  science  vital- 
ised by  the  Christian  faith  and  of  that  faith  illuminated 
in  all  its  outward  range  by  science  ;  and  it  will  be  seen 
to  be  one  with  native  intuition,  but  including  a  perspec- 
tive commensurate  with  the  visible  universe.  Christian- 
ity will  again  accept  Nature,  as  indeed  it  did  in  its 
prime,  holding  it  to  be  one  with  the  Lord,  and  find  in 


NMTtyF.    IMPRESSIONS  55 

its  wonders  as  disclosed  by  science  the  counterpart  of 
the  glory  revealed  in  him;  while  science,  which  is  al- 
ready insisting;  upon  so  nuicli  that  no  man  has  ever 
seen,  will  translate  its  invisible  elements  into  the  living 
language  of  faith. 

The  sequestration  of  spiritual  life  as  something  by 
itself,  apart  from  the  life  of  the  world  and  incomnunii- 
cable  therewith,  is  an  exaltation  that  cannot  be  long 
maintained,  since  the  power  of  an  eternal  life  must  al- 
ways be  manifest  in  the  freshness  of  time,  in  the  re- 
newal of  the  world.  A  new  creation  is  only  a  new 
nature,  having  its  own  trope,  its  proper  action  and  re- 
action, and  tile  inseparable  companionship  of  life  and 
death. 

What  new  embodiment  awaits  us  at  death  —  that 
death  in  which  we  have  no  part  and  that  has  no  part 
in  us — we  know  not,  but  we  know  that  it  is  only  trans- 
formation. "We  shall  all  be  changed."  A  new 
sensibility  woi-.Ul,  in  this  present  life,  reveal  to  us  a 
new  universe.  When  we  come  to  consider  that  what 
we  now  know  as  se.\  and  what  we  know  as  death  are, 
in  the  present  order,  only  specialisations  occurring  at 
their  due  time  in  organic  development,  we  may  com- 
prehend a  possible  order  in  which  these  would  have 
no  such  meaning  for  us — some  such  order  as  our  Lord 
intimated  when  he  said  of  the  children  of  the  resur- 
rection that  "  they  shall  not  marry  nor  be  given  in  mar- 
riage ;  neither  shall  they  die  any  more."  lUit  change 
itself,  unspecialised  Death,  these  belong  to  any  life, 
as  does  also  the  unspecialised  essential  ground  of 
what,  in  all  manifestation,  we  call  evil. 


56  A  STUDY  OF  DEATH 


IX 

These  considerations  lead  us  to  dwell  more  at  length 
upon  the  native  impression  which  regarded  life  and 
death  as  universal  and  inseparable. 

The  primitive  man  made  no  distinction  between  the 

specialised  and  the  unspecialised.    The  vast 

^f'^ir'^!!,"^   background  of  the  unseen  to  which  he  was 

of  Death.  i=> 

conjoined  by  ancestral  familiarity,  and  which 
therefore  had  for  him  only  homely  and  friendly  aspects, 
was  very  near,  an  intimate  council-chamber  to  which 
he  still  had  ready  access  and  from  participation  in 
whose  eternal  decrees  he  had  never  been  excluded. 
Here  it  was  that  Love  and  Death  and  Grief  had  been 
assigned  their  part  and  place  in  the  cosmic  harmony. 

In  the  visible  foreground — to  the  primitive  man  a 
very  narrow  field,  in  which  a  mere  fragment  of  hu- 
manity confronted  the  mere  fragment  of  a  world — were 
to  be  enacted  the  mysteries  of  the  ancient  council- 
chamber,  represented  in  masquerade,  wherein  the  old 
meanings  were  to  some  extent  disguised,  but  by  a  veil 
far  more  transparent  than  that  which  we  have  clothed 
them  with  in  modern  thought  and  custom.  Between 
the  visible  and  the  invisible  there  was  a  frank  and  easy 
interchange,  with  no  strain  of  religious  awe,  no  logical 
embarrassment,  no  grave  solicitude.  The  human,  the 
natural,  and  the  divine  were  blended  into  one  very 
simple  drama,  from  which  we  would  turn  in  mental, 
cesthetic,  and  moral  contempt. 

There  was  no  distinction  such  as  we  make  between 
living  and  non-living  matter.     The  whole  universe  was 


NATiyP.    IMPRESSIONS  57 

living  and  sentient;  and  so  persistent  was  this  native 
impression  of  an  animate  world  tliat  it  was  entertained 
for  centuries  by  philosophers,  and  even  by  Kepler,  who 
first  formulated  the  laws  of  planetary  motion.  The 
domain  of  death  was  coextensive  with  that  of  life  : 
Nature  was  not  only  living  in  every  part,  but  in  every 
part  also  dying.  In  this  earliest  faith  even  the  gods 
were  mortal.  That  sacrament  of  kinship  in  which  love 
and  death  and  grief  were  first  known  to  the  heart  of 
man,  and  known  as  inseparable,  was  a  covenant  which 
had  no  limitations.  Divine  love,  like  the  human,  was 
without  death  unavailing,  lacking  its  crowning  grace. 

I'he  Olympian  dynasty  of  gods,  hopelessly  immortal, 
was  a  later  conception  ;  and  this  dynasty  represented 
relentless  law  and  force,  lovinji  not  man,  nor  comin£r 
within  the  pale  of  Inunaii  sympathy.  1  )uring  the  whole 
l^eriod  of  ancient  paganism,  the  human  heart  turned 
from  these  passionless  divinities  to  those  of  their 
sacred  mysteries — to  gods  who  could  die  and  grieve. 

The  first  estate  of  paganism  e.xtended  the  intimacy 
of  human  kinship  till  it  included  the  visible  universe. 
The  fire  upon  the  hearth-stone  was  but  a  spark  of  the 
llame  of  Love  that  spent  itself  for  all  needs.  The 
bread  and  wine  that  gave  strength  to  man  were  sym- 
bols of  the  largest  ministration — a  descent  and  death 
for  human  increase.  The  mother,  who  brought  forth 
children  from  her  body  and  from  the  same  body  nour- 
ished them,  was  the  type  of  the  divine  motherhood, 
whose  bountv  was  freely  exhausted  for  all,  even  unto 
self-desolation. 

In  such  a  faith  there  could  be  no  rebellious  com- 
plaint   against   pain    and    frailty   and    death  ;   the   ab 


S8  A  STUDY   OF  DEATH 

sence  of  these  would  have  confounded  men,  making 
of  Hfe  a  nondescript,  a  shadowless,  glaring  absurdity. 
Nearness  to  life,  in  this  native  feeling  of  its  reality  and 
universal  pathos,  brought  a  reconcilement  of  its  con- 
tradictions, and  the  exclusion  of  any  element  would 
have  disturbed  its  harmony,  even  though  that  element, 
seen  by  itself,  might  have  appeared  discordant. 

The  primitive  faith  accepted  death  and  evil,  as  it 
accepted  darkness  and  frost,  and  at  the  same  time  re- 
garded them  as  parts  of  Love's  cycle.  Thus  it  empha- 
sised the  limitless  divine  bounty  and  indulgence,  and 
had  no  conception  of  human  or  divine  justice.  Pain 
was  not  penalty.  Blood  that  was  shed  called  for 
blood,  but,  outside  of  the  bond  of  kinship,  the  voice 
was  silent,  alien,  untranslatable. 


The  social  order  has  progressed  through  stages  in- 
volving a  constant  and  ever-widening  departure  from  its 
first  estate  of  comparative  simplicity  and  natural  piety. 

While  man  is  pre-eminently  a  social  being,  the  first 

and  natural  bond  of  flesh  and  blood  kinship  is  so  intense, 

reinforced  by  its  vitality  confined  within  a  narrow  field, 

as  to  seem  exclusive  and  dissociative.     The 

Weakness  of  P^^ent  has  a  jcalous  love  of  offspring  which 

Primitive     makes  cveu  a  neighbor  seem  alien  and  hos- 

Paganism. 

tile.  How  much  stronger  must  be  the  na- 
tive feeling  of  a  community  thus  bound  together  tow- 
ard others  not  included  in  this  alliance  !  There  is  in 
this  feeling  a  strange  mingling  of  fear   and   curiosity. 


NATiyR  IMPRESSIONS  59 

The  desire  for  communication  will  in  the  end  overcome 
the  jealousy.  The  most  interesting  feature  of  the  ear- 
liest historical  records  recently  brought  to  light  by  ar- 
chaeological exploration  is  the  frequency  of  messages  ex- 
changed between  princes  of  peoples  widely  separated, 
indicating  also  exchanges  of  visits  and  gifts  and  often 
intermarriage.  Travelling  was  an  ancient  passion, 
and  the  eagerness  with  which  the  Greeks  at  their  Olym- 
pic games  listened  to  the  foreign  gossip  of  Herodotus 
has  been  characteristic  of  men  in  all  times.  There  is 
in  the  satisfaction  of  this  curiosity  not  merely  the  charm 
of  novelty,  but  an  indication  of  that  amicability  which 
is  the  ground  of  hospitality,  lu  the  beginnings  of  com- 
merce a  certain  shyness  was  apparent — as  in  the  custom 
of  leaving  articles  of  barter  at  places  agreed  upon  ;  and 
the  fact  that  no  advantage  was  taken  of  this  shows  how 
strong,  in  the  crudest  conventions,  was  the  sentiment  uf 
honor  between  parties  too  timid  to  face  each  other  in  a 
mercantile  transaction.  Thus  from  the  fust  there  was 
indicated  the  germinal  principle  of  a  social  order,  based 
upon  honor  and  justice,  which  was  to  extend  over  the 
habitable  globe. 

As  the  living  bond  was  relaxed,  surrendering  ils  nat- 
ural force  for  the  gain  of  structural  strength,  the  native 
intuitions  belonging  thereto  were  in  a  corresponding 
measure  dissipated.  The  bond  of  kinship  was  jihysio- 
logical  and  instinctive,  giving  free  play  to  the  animal 
nature  in  the  full  range  of  its  sympathies  and  also  of 
its  animosities  ;  but  it  is  instinct  that  is  submerged  by 
rational  and  conventional  systems,  and  hidden  beneath 
the  more  complex  operations  that  are  its  specialisation. 
The  expansion  was  inevitable,  resulting  in  the  establish- 


6o  A  STUDY  OF  DEATH 

ment  of  a  government  quite  different  from  the  patri- 
archal, of  treaties  between  peoples,  and  of  internal  police 
regulation  ;  national  consolidation  ;  empire  as  the  issue 
of  conquest ;  institutional  stability,  and  the  consequent 
development  of  science,  art,  and  industry  :  an  organised 
moral  world. 

Knowing  how  severe  a  strain  primitive  Christianity 
has  sustained  in  the  material  and  intellectual  develop- 
ment of  western  nations,  we  can  readily  understand 
what  havoc  ancient  civilisation  made  of  primitive  pa- 
ganism. Among  the  Indo-European  and  Semitic  peo- 
ples, the  worship  of  ancestors  w^as  a  dying  cult  in  the 
very  dawn  of  that  civilisation.  The  same  intellectual 
culture  which  banished  the  gracious  ancestral  divinities 
brought  in  a  dynasty  which  ruled  the  world  by  inflexible 
law,  and  which  was  in  accord  with  the  social  solidarity 
based  upon  justice.  The  Sacred  Mysteries  were  re- 
tained, and  with  them  the  popular  faith  in  a  dying  Lord 
who  rose  again,  and  in  a  sorrowing  mother,  as  also  in  a 
sentient  universe,  which  was  inseparably  associated  with 
the  divine  death  and  sorrow  and  triumph — so  that  there 
still  remained  for  the  human  heart  a  field  of  divine  love 
and  pathos  into  which  were  lifted  its  own  love  and  frail- 
ty, its  passion  and  pain.  But  there  had  been  a  remark- 
able change  wrought  in  this  faith.  For,  while  only  in 
the  minds  of  a  few  had  the  ancient  philosophy  succeed- 
ed in  interposing  an  insensate  mechanism  between  man 
and  God — a  realm  of  matter,  lifeless  and  deathless  and 
so  cut  off  by  icy  barriers  from  human  sympathy, — while 
the  scientific  view  which  thrust  the  human  heart  back 
upon  itself,  isolating  its  hopes  and  fears  from  their  con- 
nection with  the  general  course  of  nature,  was  not  wide- 


NATiyE  IMPRESSIONS  6i 

ly  accepted  by  the  people,  owing  to  tlic  limited  diffu- 
sion of  knowledge,  yet  in  the  very  development  of  a 
complex  order  there  was  an  inevitable  tendency  toward 
this  fatal  schism  ;  and  the  idea  of  a  future  state  as  one 
of  rewards  and  punishments  was  generally  adopted. 
The  recognition  of  a  moral  order  under  divine  sanc- 
tion ;  the  conception  of  retributive  justice  operating  in 
the  future  as  in  the  present  lite,  only  with  greater  etTi- 
ciency ;  the  distinct  separation  in  the  minds  of  men  be- 
tween good  and  evil,  so  steadfastly  maintained  that  the 
moral  ideal  implied  the  possibility  of  absolute  rectitude 
as  the  result  of  conscious  determination,  a  perfectness 
unknown  to  Nature  and  wholly  excluding  evil — these 
were  the  results  and  reflexes  of  a  social  economy  far  ad- 
vanced beyond  its  primitive  estate  and  brought  within 
rational  control ;  and  these  modifications  of  the  relig- 
ious view  serveil  incidentally  to  reinforce  the  restraints, 
however  arbitrary  and  conventional,  of  civil  government 
and  social  custom. 

Because  paganism,  in  its  earliest  estate,  was  not  based 
upon  the  spiritual  principle  of  universal  brotherhood  ; 
because  it  never  transcended  the  limitations  of  an  im- 
agination strictly  confined  to  natural  cycles  forever  re- 
turning into  themselves,  even  as  associated  with  the 
unseen  world,  it  was  therefore  irreparably  damaged  by 
the  incursions  of  a  hostile  philosophy,  which  preyed 
upon  its  vitals,  as  did  Jove's  eagle  upon  those  of  the 
Titan  Prometheus.  The  destruction  or  the  devitalisa- 
tion  of  its  material  embodiment  left  it  no  place  of  ref- 
uge, since  only  in  that  embodiment  had  it  a  habitation. 
Its  disintegration  could  not  be  followeil  by  rehabili- 
tation  from  any  principle  within   itself.      As  its  action 


62  A  STUDY  OF  DEATH 

in  faith  lacked  the  complete  expression  of  a  spiritual 
fellowship,  so  its  reaction  and  contradiction  in  the  out- 
ward social  order  was  incomplete  in  the  realisation  of 
equity. 

The  structure  of  paganism,  considered  as  a  whole,  in 
its  religion  and  its  outward  economy,  was,  like  its  archi- 
tecture, low-arched,  too  limited  in  its  scope  to  escape 
ruin  as  a  whole.  It  lacked  the  Master  Mason  to  build 
it  high,  availing  of  weight  for  support,  of  descending 
movements  for  new  ascents,  of  death  for  life.  It  was 
overweighted,  and  crumbled  to  the  ground  all  along  the 
lines  of  its  construction,  beautiful  in  its  ruins,  which  in 
every  part  indicated  a  magnificent  virile  effort,  and  at 
the  same  time  a  fatal  inherent  weakness. 

We  shall  see  hereafter,  when  we  come  to  consider  the 
structure  of  Christendom,  that  whatever  may  be  the  de- 
partures of  the  latter  from  its  spiritual  principle — de- 
partures repeating  and  often  exaggerating  the  defects 
of  paganism — yet  its  scope  is  large  enough  for  the  com- 
pletion of  its  cycle,  through  the  consummation  of  its 
social  and  intellectual  development,  in  a  return  to  that 
principle ;  and  we  shall  also  see  how  science  itself  in 
its  later  revelations  helps  to  bring  the  human  reason 
back  to  the  recognition  of  evil — or  what  we  call  evil — 
as  a  reaction  proper  to  life  in  all  its  manifestations,  di- 
vine or  human.  The  fraternal  sympathy,  which  is  the 
ultimate  fruit  of  Christian  faith,  will  restore,  in  new  and 
higher  meanings  and  appreciations,  the  universal  pathol- 
ogy naively  implied  in  primitive  intuition. 


THIRD  BOOK 
PROniGAL    SONS:    A    COSMIC    PARAMLH 


CIIArTKR   I 
THE    UIVIDEIJ    LIVING 

I 

"PORMLESS,  imageless,  nowhere,  nowhilc,  non-cxist- 
*  cut — a  Void  :  and  over  against  this,  all  that  is, 
tiiat  ever  was,  and  ever  shall  be — a  I'niverse.  Every- 
tiiing  from  nothing.  We  have  no  other 
j)hrase  for  the  mystery  of  Creation,  save  as  ^"1,10,'" 
we  express  it  personally  in  the  words  Father 
and  Son.  For  that  which,  in  this  contradiction  be- 
tween the  essential  and  the  manifest,  we  call  Nothing, 
for  want  of  a  nominative,  is  the  infniite  source  of  all 
life.  When  we  say  of  the  visible  world  that  it  is  the 
expression  of  Him,  we  are  saying  as  best  we  can  that 
the  world  is  because  He  is;  but  even  this  idea  of 
causation  falls  short  of  the  mystery,  of  which,  indeeil, 
we  can  have  no  idea,  since  our  imagination  cannot 
transcend  the  world  of  images.  How  can  there  be  an 
image  of  the  imagelcss  ?  We  proceed  through  a  series 
of  negations,  abolishing  time  and  the  world,  existence 
itself,  and  when  our  annihilation  is  complete,  the  Void, 
in  our  spiritual  apprehension,  brings  us  face  to  face 
with  the  Father  of  beginnings  ;  the  boundless  empti- 
ness becomes  the  boundless  ph-rot/iii,  or  fulness. 

Therefore  it  is  that   Death,  which  brings  to  naught, 

5 


66  A  STUDY   OF  DEATH 

discloses  the  creative  power  of  life.  If  this  power 
were  simply  creative  and  not  re-creative,  formative  but 
not  transforming,  the  world  would  be  the  seamless, 
never -changing  garment  of  God.  From  the  first,  in 
all  this  cosmic  weaving.  Death  is  at  the  shuttle,  com- 
pleting the  trope  in  every  movement,  every  fold  ;  with 
his  face  turned  always  to  the  Father,  he  whispers  re- 
lease to  every  living  thing;  and  thus  he  becomes  the 
Leader  of  Souls,  bidding  them  turn  from  the  world 
that  is,  that  he  may  show  them  a  new  heaven  and  a 
new  earth,  calling  them  to  repentance  and  a  new  birth. 
He  is  the  strong  Israfil,  winged  for  flight,  and  ever 
folding  his  wings  for  new  flight.  Under  his  touch  all 
things  turn — -to  noon  and  then  to  night ;  to  maturity 
and  then  to  age ;  but  we  shall  not  find  him  in  the  old 
which  we  call  dead — f/iat  he  has  already  left  behind, 
bidding  us  come  and  follow  him,  while  with  one  hand 
he  points  to  a  new  generation  upon  the  earth,  and 
with  the  other  .to  an  unseen  regeneration. 

Thus  inseparably  associated  with  the  genetic,  Death 
is  bound  up  with  the  mystery  of  Creation  itself.  The 
evening  and  the  morning  were  the  first  day. 


II 

Who  can  bridge  the  chasm  between  the  unseen  sub- 
stantive in  the  grammar  of  Life  and  its  genitive  case  ? 
Who  shall  find  for  us  the  dominant  in  the  musical  gamut 
— that  original  trope  of  genesis,  through  which  the  sing- 
ing stars  danced  into  the  field  of  Dawn  ?  Who  shall 
show  us  the  invisible  fulcrum  of  the  first  leverage,  the 


THF.    DII^IDED   Ul^lSC  67 

initial  of  the  celestial  mechanics?  There  is  no  ship 
we  can  make  to  launcli  upon  the  ocean  which  separates 
the  finite  from  the  infinite,  time  from  eternity,  the  world 
from  God. 

There  is,  indeed,  no  such  ocean,  no  such  separation 
— no  chasm  to  be  bridged.  The  web  of  e.xistence  may 
liave  interstices;  in  time  and  space  there  are  intervals 
between  things,  degrees,  similitudes,  diversi- 
ties ;  media  that  at  once  separate  and  unite.  Ki^.^KlnsII" 
1  lere  nearness  and  distance  are  comparative ; 
but  no  individual  existence  is  near  any  other  with  that 
intimacy  which  each  has  with  the  Spirit  of  Life  ;  there 
is  no  familiarity  in  the  world  like  the  eternal  familiarity. 
It  is  spiritually  represented  in  the  nearness  of  the  eter- 
nally begotten  Son  to  the  Father  ;  the  Son  is  forever 
Sent,  yet  is  always  in  the  bosom  of  the  Father.  The  uni- 
verse, expressed  in  the  term  Nature,  reflects  this  inti- 
macy ;  it  is  forever  being  born,  living  from  its  source, 
yet  there  is  in  the  consistency  of  all  its  parts  in  one 
harmonious  whole  no  bond  so  strong  as  that  holding 
it  to  the  Father.  Procreation  is  the  nearest  image  of 
creation,  involving  at  once  otherness  and  likeness. 

Existence  seems  a  denial  of  Heing,  because  we  are 
unable  to  predicate  anything  of  Heing  save  by  the  ne- 
gation of  our  predicates  concerning  existence.  More- 
over the  progressive  specialisation  of  existence  seems  to 
involve  successively  more  and  more  a  surrender  of  the 
potency  anil  wisdom  that,  in  llie  essential  source  of 
all,  are  infinite,  it  is  as  if,  in  time  and  in  the  world, 
the  Father  had  divided  unto  all  His  living,  every  adtled 
complexity  signifying  greater  multiplicity  and  so  a 
greater   division.      The   denial    is   aj)parent   only.      In 


68  A  STUDY   OF  DEATH 

reality  all  visible  existence  is  to  invisible  Being  as  the 
stream  to  its  fountain,  so  consubstantial  therewitli  that 
it  should  be  thought  of  as  one  with  rather  than  as  re- 
lated thereto,  than  related  even  as  effect  to  cause.  The 
embodiment  is  proper  to  the  spirit.  The  ever  repeated 
creation  is  genesis,  a  constant  Becoming.  The  Eternal 
becomes  the  temporal.  The  boundless  life  is  the 
abounding,  and  its  bounds,  or  limitations,  while  on  the 
visible  side  contradicting  boundlessness,  are  really  the 
bonds  of  kinship  with  the  Eternal.  The  quality  of 
life  is  the  same  in  the  limitations  as  in  the  boundless- 
ness. Finitude  is  of  the  Infinite  ;•  Form  is  of  the  un- 
seen shaping  power  ;  and  Transformation  is  essentially 
genetic,  creative. 


Ill 

In  an  unchanging  world — if  such  a  world  were  con- 
ceivable— we  would  have  no  apprehension  of  this  genetic 
quality  of  life,  which  is  not  suggested  in  a  persistent  ap- 
pearance, but  only  in  disappearance,  or  disappearance 
followed  by  reappearance.  That  trope  of  a 
ingView^rRs  cycle  through  which  existence  vanishes  is, 
Spiritual  Bug-  therefore,  a  dissolving  view  fraught  with  spir- 

gestion.  '  ^  _       ^  \ 

itual  suggestion.  The  end  is  lost  in  begin- 
ning. All  transitions,  all  the  phenomena  of  change, 
become  luminous  points  in  consciousness,  leading  from 
the  fixed  to  the  flowing,  from  ends  to  beginnings,  from 
the  visible  shapes  passing  before  us  to  the  invisible 
shaping  power  ;  and  when  anything  so  passes  as  to  ut- 
terly escape  vision  —  like  the  passing  of  a  soul  —  we 
have  the  deeper  suggestion,  from  which  arises  a   tran- 


THE  DiyiDED  LINING  69 

scendent  mystical  vision  ;  a  power  is  released  in  us 
which  follows  the  power  that  has  been  released,  into  its 
unseen  realm  ;  and  so  we  are  ever  pursuing  that  which 
Hies,  even  through  the  gate  of  its  Nothingness,  to  ap- 
prehend, though  we  may  not  define,  its  essential  qual- 
ity, as  our  eyes  follow  the  ascending  mists  till  they  van- 
ish and  we  see  the  clear  heaven,  from  which  they  are 
no  longer  distinct,  being  one  therewith  and  participant  of 
its  powers. 

IV 

As  through  the  trope  which  is  Death  is  the  entrance 
to  greater  potency,  so  in  that  -of  Birth  there  is  an  ap- 
parent surrender  of  power,  a  veiling  thereof  in  embod- 
iment ;  and  the  first  Genesis,  if  there  were 
a  first,  was  the  nrimarv  abnegation,  wherein  '^'"^  'nvolve- 
the  Infinite  became  the  Finite. 

Standing  at  the  gate  of  Birth,  it  would  seem  as  if  it 
were  the  vital  destination  of  all  things  to  Hy  from  their 
source,  as  if  it  were  the  dominant  desire  of  life  to  enter 
into  limitations,  ^^'e  might  mentally  represent  to  our 
selves  an  essence  simple  and  indivisible  that  denies 
itself  in  diversified  manifold  existence.  To  us  this  side 
the  veil,  nay  immeshed  in  innumerable  veils  that  hide 
from  us  the  Father's  face,  this  insistence  appears  to 
have  the  stress  of  urgency,  as  if  the  effort  of  all  being, 
its  unceasing  travail,  were  like  the  beating  of  the  infi- 
nite ocean  upon  the  shores  of  Time,  and  as  if,  within  the 
continent  of  Time,  all  existence  were  forever  knocking 
at  new  gates,  seeking,  through  some  as  yet  untried  path 
of  progression,  greater   complexity,  a    deeper    involve- 


yo  A  STUDY  OF  DEATH 

ment.  All  the  children  seem  to  be  beseeching  the  Fa- 
ther to  divide  unto  them  His  living,  none  willingly  abid- 
ing in  that  Father's  house.  But  in  reality  their  will  is 
His  will — they  fly  and  they  are  driven,  like  fledglings 
from  the  mother  nest. 


The  story  of  a  solar  system,  or  of  any  synthesis  in 
time,  repeats  the  parable  of  the  Prodigal  Son,  in  its 
essential  features.     It  is  a  cosmic  parable. 

The  planet  is  a  wanderer  {planes)  and  the  individual 
planetary  destiny  can  be  accomplished  only  through 
flight  from  its  source.  After  all  its  prodigality  it  shall 
sicken  and  return. 

Attributing  to  the  Earth,  thus  apparently  separated 
from  the  Sun,  some  macrocosmic  sentience,  what  must 
have  been  her  wondering  dream,  finding  herself  at  once 
thrust  away  and  securely  held,  poised  be- 
^''pian"*!'^^^  tween  her  flight  and  her  bond,  and  so  swinging 
into  a  regular  orbit  about  the  Sun,  while  at 
the  same  time,  in  her  rotation,  turning  to  him  and  away 
from  him — into  the  light  and  into  the  darkness — for- 
ever denying  and  confessing  her  lord  !  Her  emotion 
must  have  been  one  of  delight,  however  mingled  with 
a  feeling  of  timorous  awe,  since  her  desire  could  not 
have  been  other  than  one  with  her  destination.  De- 
spite the  distance  and  the  growing  coolness,  she  could 
feel  the  kinship  still  ;  her  pulse,  though  modulated,  was 
still  in  rhythm  with  that  of  the  solar  heart,  and  in  her 
bosom  were  hidden  consubstantial  fires.  But  it  was 
the  sense  of  otherness,  of  her  own  distinct  individuation, 


THi:  DlVlDlil)   Ul/ING  Jl 

tliat  was  mainly  being  nourished,  this  sense,  moreover, 
being  proper  to  her  destiny  ;  therefore  the  signs  of  her 
hkeness  to  the  Sun  were  more  and  more  being  buried 
from  her  view;  her  fires  were  veiled  by  a  hardening 
crust,  and  her  opaqueness  stood  out  against  his  h'ght. 
She  had  no  regret  for  all  she  was  surrendering,  think- 
ing only  of  her  gain,  of  being  clothed  upon  with  a  gar- 
ment showing  ever  some  new  fold  of  surprising  beauty 
and  wonder.  If  she  had  remained  in  the  Father's 
house — like  the  elder  brother  in  the  Parable  —  then 
would  all  that  He  had  have  been  hers,  in  nebulous  sim- 
plicity. But  now,  holding  her  revels  apart,  she  seems 
to  sing  her  own  song,  and  to  dream  her  own  beautiful 
dream,  wandering,  with  a  motion  wholly  her  own,  among 
the  gardens  of  cosmic  order  and  loveliness.  She  glories 
in  her  many  veils,  which,  though  they  hide  from  her 
both  her  source  and  her  very  self,  are  the  media  through 
which  the  invisible  light  is  broken  into  multiform  illu- 
sions that  enrich  her  dream.  She  beholds  the  Sun  as 
a  far-off  insphered  being  e.xisting  for  her,  her  ministrant 
bridegroom  ;  and  when  her  face  is  turned  away  from  hitn 
into  the  night,  she  beholds  innumerable  suns,  a  myriad 
of  archangels,  all  witnesses  of  some  infinitely  remote 
and  central  flame — the  Spirit  of  all  life.  Vet,  in  the 
midst  of  these  visible  images,  she  is  absorbed  in  her  in- 
dividual dream,  wherein  she  appears  to  herself  to  be  the 
mother  of  all  living.  It  is  proper  to  her  destiny  that 
she  should  be  thus  enwrapped  in  her  own  distinct  action 
and  passion  and  refer  to  herself  the  appearances  of  a 
universe.  While  all  that  is  not  she  is  what  she  really 
is — necessary,  that  is,  to  her  full  definition— she.  on  the 
other  liatul,  from  liersclf  interprets  all  else.     This  is  the 


72  A  STUDY  OF  DEATH 

inevitable  terrestrial  idealism,  peculiar  to  every  individ- 
uation in  time  —  the  individual  thus  balancing  the  uni- 
verse. 


VI 

In  reality,  the  Earth   has  never  left  the  Sun ;  apart 

from  him  she  has  no  life,  any  more  than  has  the  branch 

severed  from  the  vine.     More  truly  it  may 

of  Distance"  be    Said    that    the    Sun    has    never  left  the 

Earth. 

No  prodigal  can  really  leave  the  Father's  house,  any 
more  than  he  can  leave  himself;  coming  to  himself,  he 
feels  the  Father's  arms  about  him — they  have  always 
been  there — he  is  newly  apparelled,  and  wears  the  sig- 
net ring  of  native  prestige;  he  hears  the  sound  of  fa- 
miliar music  and  dancing,  and  it  may  be  that  the  young 
and  beautiful  forms  mingling  with  him  in  this  festival 
are  the  riotous  youths  and  maidens  of  his  far-country 
revels,  also  come  to  themselves  and  home,  of  whom  also 
the  Father  saith :  These  were  dead  and  are  alive  again, 
they  were  lost  and  are  found.  The  starvation  and  sense 
of  exile  had  been  parts  of  a  troubled  dream — a  dream 
which  had  also  had  its  ecstasy  but  had  come  into  a 
consuming  fever,  with  delirious  imaginings  of  fresh 
fountains,  of  shapes  drawn  from  the  memory  of  child- 
hood, and  of  the  cool  touch  of  kindred  hands  upon  the 
brow.  So  near  is  exile  to  home,  misery  to  divine  com- 
miseration—so near  are  pain  and  death,  desolation  and 
divestiture,  to  "  a  new  creature  "  and  to  the  kinship  in- 
volved in  all  creation  and  re-creation. 

Distance  in  the  cosmic   order   is   a  standing- apart, 


Tkiii  nivini-n  lining  73 

which  is  only  another  expression  of  the  expansion  and 
abundance  of  creative  life  ;  but  at  every  remove  its  re- 
tlcx  is  nearness,  a  bond  of  attraction,  insphering  and 
curving,  making  orb  and  orbit.  While  in  space  this 
attraction  is  diminished — being  inversely  as  the  square 
of  the  distance — and  so  there  is  maintained  and  em- 
phasised the  appearance  of  suspension  and  isolation, 
yet  in  time  it  gains  preponderance,  contracting  sphere 
and  orbit,  aging  planets  and  suns,  and  accumulating 
destruction,  which  at  the  point  of  annihilation  becomes 
a  new  creation.  This  (irand  Cycle,  which  is  but  a 
pulsation  or  breath  of  the  eternal  life,  illustrates  a  truth 
which  is  repeated  in  its  least,  and  most  minutely  di- 
vided, moment — that  birth  lies  next  to  death,  as  water 
crystallises  at  the  freezing  point,  and  the  plant  blossoms 
at  points  most  remote  from  the  source  of  nutrition. 


VII 

VVc  need  to  carry  this  idea  of  Death,  as  .i->>uLiali.d 
with   Creation    and   Transformation,  into  our  study  of 
visible  existence  ;  otherwise  the  claims  of  philosophy 
as  well  as  of  faith  are  likely  to  be  sacrificed       -n.^ 
to  those  of  a  science  which,  in  its  persistent  Tendency  to 

Ignore  the 

specialisation,   tends    to    wholly    ignore    the     Crcnive 
prmciple  of  creative  life.     \\e  have  no  lear 
of  honest  agnosticism,  of  dilettanteism,  or  even  of  in 
fidelity.     The  real   danger  lies  in  the  inflexible  certi- 
tude of  the  specialist.     The  peril  touches  not  religion 
alone,  nor  is  natural  science  its  only  source.     The  ex- 
treme specialisation  of  modern  lite   in  every  field  con- 
inies  thought  as  it  does  elfuil  anil   tends  to  conserva- 


74  A  STUDY  OF  DEATH 

tion  and  stability-  Its  perversity  is  in  its  opposition  to 
reaction  ;  it  will  not  readily  admit  a  solvent,  and  resists 
every  subversive  or  destructive  element,  unwilling  to  let 
the  dead  bury  its  dead.  This  tendency  affects  theology 
more  than  it  does  physical,  political,  and  economic  sci- 
ence. The  children  of  this  world  are  wiser  in  their 
generation  than  the  children  of  light,  because  they  are 
not  so  closely  bound  by  unvital  traditions,  and  also  be- 
cause a  merely  utilitarian  interest  compels  solvency, 
change,  revolution. 

The  perversion  of  human  thought,  in  its  attitude  tow- 
ard Death  and  Evil,  and  its  consequent  exclusion  and 
ignorance  of  divine  absolution  as  a  constant  and  inti- 
mate creative  transformation  in  Nature  and  humanity,  is 
especially  easy  to  the  modern  mind  which  regards  Nature 
as  impersonal  and  man's  relation  thereto  as  accidental 
and  temporary  and  mainly  significant  in  its  utilitarian 
aspects. 

Generally  the  terms  of  science  are  unvital.  Force, 
matter,  motions,  vibrations,  laws  :  these  terms  give  us 
no  impression  of  a  living  world.  Science  is  confined 
to  a  formal  conception  of  existence,  and  is  concerned 
with  quantity  (the  measure  and  proportion  of  elements 
and  their  relations  in  time  and  space,  mathematically 
expressed)  rather  than  with  quality.  Even  the  theo- 
logian thinks  of  eternity  as  duration,  as  quantitative 
rather  than  qualitative.  The  Latin  for  reason  is  7-afio  ; 
and  to  the  Greek  all  learning  was  mathcsis,  from  which 
the  term  mathematics  is  derived.  Next  to  the  stress 
which  science  lays  upon  the  form  is  that  which  it  gives 
to  uniformity,  from  which  it  makes  those  generalisations 
that  are  called  laws.     These  limitations  of  science  to 


THF.  niyiDF.n  lining  75 

consideration  of  method  and  proportion  are  inevitable  ; 
but  since  form  is  of  the  essence  and  quantitative 
relations  have  a  qualitative  ground,  the  true  philos- 
opher apprehends  a  reality  beneath  as  well  as  in  the 
form,  the  shaping  power  and  wisdom  transcending  as 
well  as  immanent  in  the  visible  shapes  of  the  world,  and 
thus  in  every  fresh  scientific  discovery  he  finds  a  new 
intimation  of  spiritual  truth.  All  the  manners  of  the 
universe  become  to  him  traits  of  the  divine  Personality 
in  whom  it  "  lives  and  moves  and  has  its  being."  Too 
often  it  happens  that  the  scientific  specialist,  when  he 
transcends  his  specialty  and  enters  upon  the  larger 
field  of  philosophy,  brings  with  him  into  that  field  the 
unvital  terms  which  are  there  inadequate  and  mislead- 
ing. How,  for  example,  can  one  who  insists  upon  ever- 
lasting uniformity,  and  so  upon  invariable  laws,  express 
truly  the  spiritual  apprehension  of  Life  as  a  transform- 
ing power?  The  incompatibility  is  more  conspicuous 
if  these  laws  are  regarded  as  impersonal,  as  belonging 
to  matter,  whether  independently  or  by  divine  delega- 
tion once  and  for  all,  and,  however  imposed,  as  limiting 
the  divine  operation. 


VIII 

But  all  human  specialisation,  whether  in  science  or 
elsewhere,  follows  Nature's  own  leading.  We  deprecate 
materialism,  mechanism,  and  utilitarianism,  but  these 
are  most  conspicuous   in   the  cosmic  order.  _ 

Man's  development  of  outward  structure,  so-    Pattern  of 
cial,  political,  and   industrial,  corresponds  to 
the  cosmic  development  which  prcpannl  the  w.iy  f'^r 


76  A  STUDY   OF  DEATH 

his  progress,  which,  indeed,  by  the  constitution  of  firma- 
ments gave  him  a  standing-place  in  the  world.  God  is 
the  first  materialist.  Mechanism  is  celestial  before  it  is 
earthly  and  human. 

Seeing,  then,  a  world  prepared  for  him,  a  world  of 
things  ready  for  his  arbitrary  fashioning  —  metal  and 
stone  and  wood — things  cut  off  from  their  living  cur- 
rents by  natural  sequestration,  or  which  he  might  him- 
self so  cut  off  for  food,  raiment,  and  shelter,  and,  later, 
for  these  uses  in  more  ambitious  and  luxurious  fashion  ; 
seeing,  in  his  further  progress,  that  he  might  lay  hold 
upon  the  living  currents  themselves  and  divert  them  to 
his  use  in  more  complex  and  heavier  undertakings,  di- 
viding them  according  to  his  requisition,  or  even  holding 
them  in  storage  for  his  convenient  and  leisurely  division  ; 
taking  note,  moreover,  of  a  constant  providence,  answer- 
ing to  his  prudence,  and  the  regularity  of  Nature's  hab- 
its, suiting  a  never-failing  ministration  to  his  needs — is 
it  strange  that  man  should  have  yielded  to  the  divine 
temptation,  conforming  to  the  divine  exemplar,  the  pat- 
tern shown  to  him  not  only  upon  every  mount,  but  in 
every  depth  and  in  every  path  opened  to  his  eager 
feet? 

For,  on  the  human  side,  there  was  not  merely  passive 
yielding  and  conformity;  there  was  desire,  which  seized 
with  violence  upon  a  kingdom  at  hand.  Save  unto  de- 
sire there  is  no  temptation,  no  stimulation  save  of  a 
faculty,  no  ministration  but  to  a  craving  capacity.  All 
embodiment  is  but  the  extension  of  importunate  desire. 
Man's  entreating  of  the  world  is  first  and  always  a  pas- 
sionate entreaty;  he  "  has  no  language  but  a  cry."  As 
his  embodiment  is  the  outward  projection  of  his  clam- 


THH  Diyinr.n  lining  77 

oroiis  need,  so  all  he  feeds  upon  and  gathers  to  himself 
as  a  possession,  all  that  he  unites  with  through  kinship, 
affinity,  and  the  ever-broadening  communion  with  Nat- 
ure and  his  kind,  is  an  extension  of  his  organism  in 
time  and  in  the  world,  an  expansion  of  his  exhaust- 
less  litany.  And  all  his  prayers  are  answered.  What- 
ever may  be  man's  sense  of  responsibility, 
the  divine  responsibility  encompasses  the  '^''*''".?..,!**' 
universe,  not  only  at  every  point  unfailing, 
but  all-inclusive,  embracing  all  wanderings  and  all  the 
wanderers.  There  is  no  system  in  which  light  is  broken 
by  shadows  and  alternates  with  darkness,  where  the 
darkness  is  not  of  divine  ordinance  as  well  as  the  light; 
no  prison-house  or  place  of  exile  in  which  man  can 
ever  lind  himself  which  was  not  prepared  for  him  from 
tiie  foundation  of  the  world. 


IX 

The  Father  hath,  indeed,  divided  unto  all  His  living. 
In   the   structural   specialisation  which    has    gone    on 
with  the  division,  one  of  the  most    striking 
peculiarities   is  the  arrest  and   suspense  of    "s,'X'i"" 
living  currents,  giving  things  upon  the  earth 
the  appearance  of  stability — a  tendency  to  solidifica- 
tion, to  hardness,  especially  at  points  of  su|)erficial  con- 
tact, until  the  hardness  becomes  brittleness,  and  from 
extreme  attrition  all  things  seem  to  come  to  dust.    Wiiile 
this  is  more  noticeable  in  inorganic  matter,  it  is  also  a 
characteristic  of  organisms.    With  the  hardening  of  the 
earth's  crust  there  comes  to  be  a  tougher  fibre  of  plant 
life,  and  the  vertebrate  animal  appears  ;   and  in  each 


78  A  STUDY  OF  DEATH 

individual  organism  age  is  indicated  by  the  induration 
and  fragility  of  structure.  The  hands  grow  hard  like 
the  things  they  handle,  as  do  the  soles  of  the  feet  from 
walking.  Use  and  wont  beget  indifference  and  even 
cruelty  in  the  moral  nature.  Institutions  have  the  same 
tendency ;  rituals  become  formal,  governments  rigid 
and  perfunctory,  industry  a  dull  routine.  Social  re- 
finement at  its  extreme  is  hard  enough  to  take  a  polish, 
and  aims  to  present  a  front  of  cold  and  staring  imper- 
turbability. 

The  points  of  contact  between  man  and  the  outside 
world,  after  the  period  of  his  first  childlike  wonder  has 
passed,  are  mainly  those  associated  with  his  handling 
of  material  things  that  may  be  moved  about  and  manip- 
ulated at  his  option.  The  timid  reverence  that  belongs 
to  tender  sensibility  is  dissipated  by  familiarity,  which 
leads  first  to  na'ive  play,  wherein  there  still  remains  a 
trace  of  shyness,  and  then  to  the  bold  workmanship  of 
the  artificer.  The  wandering  stream  of  nomadic  hu- 
manity is  arrested,  and  the  movable  tent  gives  place  to 
the  fixed  dwelling.  Social  stability  obtains  firm  founda- 
tions ;  the  shepherd  with  his  living  flocks  becomes  an 
episode,  lingering  in  the  fields  outside  the  growing  city ; 
metals,  at  first  used  only  for  ornament,  are  coined  into 
tokens  of  commercial  exchange ;  temples  are  built  for 
the  worship  of  Him  who  was  once  sought  in  every  liv- 
ing fountain  ;  and  over  the  dust  of  kings  arise  the 
pyramids. 

All  this  is  but  a  continuation  of  that  terrestrial  de- 
velopment by  which  the  rock-ribbed  continents  emerged 
from  the  flowing  seas ;  and  as  upon  the  continents  the 
web  of  life  is  woven  in  more  varied  shapes  of  plant  and 


THE  DiyinF.n  lining  79 

bird  and  beast,  so  about  the  fixed  structures  of  man's 
inakinjjj  Hows  the  human  current  in  a  slower  movement, 
l)ut  statcMer  and  more  manifoldly  beautiful.  The  insu- 
lation and  stability  are  only  relative  ;  nothing  is  perma- 
nently held  aloof  from  the  general  circulation.  Water 
held  in  the  closest  receptacles  sooner  or  later  finds  its 
way  to  the  sea ;  and  the  sea,  which  is  forever  erod- 
ing and  transposing  continents,  is  itself  continually  dis- 
solving in  vapour.  Resistance  becomes  the  fulcrum 
of  leverage.  There  is  no  point  of  rest  in  the  uni- 
verse. 

Nevertheless  the  progressive  specialisation  of  life 
lays  stress  upon  the  separateness  and  insulation,  and 
this  emphasis  of  Time  punctuates  the  Word  from  the 
beginning,  until  that  Word  is  made  flesh  in  the  Christ, 
who  gathers  up  all  the  fragments  that  none  may  be  lost, 
who  shows  us  the  Father,  and  who  is  himself  utterly 
broken  and  made  whole  again  before  our  eyes,  that  we 
may  comprehend  the  glory  of  Death. 


The  emphasis  of  Time  begins  with  Creation.  He- 
ginning  is  genetic,  creative,  on  its  unseen  side  eternal, 
though  conceivable  by  the  mind  only  as  in 
lime  and  space.  Time,  etymologically,  means  "j'f  i^n^^'* 
something  cut  otT,  a  section,  a  season  (tctn- 
/<i:\/,rs) ;  anil  in  like  manner  we  think  of  space  as  some- 
thing in  allolnient.  Study  demands  attention — an  arrest 
of  thought  regarding  an  object  also  held  in  suspense. 
Tims  contemplation  (from  the  same  root  as  time")  im- 


8o  A  STUDY  OF  DEATH 

plies  the  intent  beholding  of  things  confined  within  a 
circle  cast  about  them,  like  a  spell  in  magic. 

All  these  terms,  signifying  confinement,  definition, 
arrest,  suspense,  are  expressions  of  finitude,  of  a  world 
passed,  as  it  were,  from  its  genitive  to  its  accusative 
case — to  the  field  of  objective  reality,  appearing  in  this 
view  as  measurable  matter  and  motion,  as  broken  in 
time  and  space  into  related  parts  and  sections  and  even 
into  inert  particular  fragments  that  often,  though  near- 
est our  hands  and  feet  and  emphatically  real,  seem 
irrelevant,  trivial,  and  inconsequent. 

It  is  far  away  from  the  plenty  of  the  Father's  house 
to  the  husks  on  which  men  starve.  There  the  abound- 
ing, eternal  life — here  the  limitation  and  involvement ; 
there  the  infinite  power — and  here  at  the  end  of  things 
mere  dust  and  impotence,  empty  travail,  stumblings, 
vexation,  defeat.  Finally  the  extremes  meet — starva- 
tion and  the  feast,  sickness  and  healing.  Not  a  sparrow 
falls  to  the  ground  without  the  Father's  notice,  and  the 
very  hairs  of  our  head  are  numbered. 

We  must  needs  continually  keep  this  everlasting 
nearness  of  home  at  heart,  and  in  this  personal  way, 
because  of  the  apparent  remoteness,  and  because  the 
ordinary  course  of  thought  as  well  as  the  tendency  of 
scientific  analysis  is  toward  an  impersonal  view. 


XI 

The  divided  living  or,  as  it  is  scientifically  phrased, 
the  specialisation  of  life,  is  a  development  stretching 
through  long  periods,  each  of  which  is  marked  by  the 


THE  nil/IDFD  l.iyiNG  8 1 

appearance  of  some  new  form  of  existence  upon  the 
earth.  While  the  older  theology  accounted 
for  each  new  stage  of  development  by  a  *-''f»"*'*_ Spe- 
series  of  special  creations,  modern  science 
has  sought  to  exclude  altogether  the  idea  of  any  crea- 
tion, regarding  each  new  form  of  life  as  evolved  from 
antecedent  forms  through  natural  selection  and  the 
modification  of  environment.  The  older  theology,  as 
represented  by  Paley,  attempted  to  explain  the  mar- 
vellous adaptations  which  constitute  the  rhytiimic  har- 
mony of  the  universe  by  the  operations  of  an  intelli- 
gence patterned  after  the  limited  and  specialised  human 
understanding,  first  choosing  to  create  and  then  arbi- 
trarily choosing  means  for  the  accomplishment  of  ra- 
tionally conceived  ends.  Modern  science  has,  in  the 
rejection  of  this  idea,  gone  to  the  extreme  of  repudiat- 
ing divine  purpose,  explaining  cosmic  co-ordination 
by  an  impersonal  selective  wisdom  inherent  in  matter 
itself. 

By  substituting  creative  specialisation  for  special 
creations  and  postulating  a  supreme  Personal  \\"\\\ 
and  Intelligence,  transcending  specialisation  ,^^  ,^^ 
but  immanent  therein,  with  a  purposiveness  «:en«ient  I'cr- 
spontaneous  m  its  working,  not  according 
to  plan  as  the  result  of  choice  (in  our  luiinan  sense  of 
the  term),  hut  showing  a  plan,  not  limited  by  alterna- 
tive, but  itself  the  ground  of  alternation.  Christian  phi- 
losophy presents  to  science  not  merely  the  ground  of 
common  agreement,  but  a  view  involving  no  more  mys- 
tical assumption  than  is  involved  in  tiie  postulalions 
made  by  science  itself  of  an  invisible  ether  and  an  in- 
visible atom— whether  the  latter  be  considered  the  ulti- 


82  A   STUDY  OF  DEATH 

mate  material  particle  or  a  vortical  motion  of  the  ether 
— a  view,  moreover,  which,  accordant  with  faith  in  a 
loving  Father  as  the  source  of  all  life,  also  clears  the 
scientific  field  of  problems  that  from  their  very  nature 
are  insoluble  by  any  possibly  discoverable  facts.  Such 
problems  as  are  presented  in  the  questions :  What  is 
the  origin  of  organic  life  upon  the  earth  ?  and  How  is 
the  psychical  developed  from  the  physical  ?  cannot  be 
solved  by  any  data  lying  within  the  limits  of  scientific 
investigation;  they  arise,  indeed,  and  assume  their  most 
formidable  shape  through  lack  of  faith  in  the  sufficiency 
of  creative  life  for  its  own  transformations.  There  is 
really  no  greater  chasm  between  the  inorganic  and  the 
organic,  between  neurosis  and  psychosis,  than  there  is 
at  any  stage  of  the  progressive  specialisation. 

Regarding  specialisation  as  at  every  point  a  creative 
act,  the  problems  disappear ;  Life  itself  becomes  the 
great  bridge-builder — the  poniifex  maxiinus ;  and  con- 
sidering, furthermore,  that  reaction  proper  to  Life,  where- 
by it  has  solvency  and  escape  from  any  individual  syn- 
thesis, and  even  in  due  time  repents  itself  of  an  entire 
species,  rising  again  in  some  other  body  or  in  some 
wholly  new  type  of  embodiment,  then  indeed  that  sin- 
gular Voice,  saying  /  am  the  Resurrection  and  the  Life, 
may  give  the  transcendent  note  to  philosophy  as  it  does 
to  faith. 

It  is  indeed  a  singular  Voice,  and  proclaims  a  truth 
which,  from  the  foundation  of  the  world,  has  been 
hidden. 


THF.  niyinF.n  uyiNc  83 


XII 


The  progressive  specialisation  of  life  is  not  through 
evolution  primarily,  but  through  involution,  every  new 
stage  of  progress  being  a  new  folding  of  the 
veil.  The  universe  is  not  an  unfolding  of  o("<^'"^ 
(jod,  but  a  folding  of  Him  away  from  Him- 
self, until  the  manifold  hiding  is  completed  in  the  hu- 
man consciousness  which  is  the  ultimate  fold  of  all. 
i'here  could  be  no  more  arbitrary  and  mechanical  con- 
ception of  God  than  that  of  Him  as  a  vast  involute,  im- 
plicating the  universe.  Progress  would  then  be  from 
what  is  most  complex,  through  a  series  of  explications 
to  what  is  most  simple.  This  is  pantheism  in  its  bald- 
est form,  abrogating  the  mystery  of  Creation,  which  is 
also  abrogated  in  the  theory  of  emanation. 

Both  the  transcendency  and  the  immanence  of  crea- 
tive life  begin  to  be  hidden  with  the  beginning  of  ex- 
istence. When  God  said  Let  there  be  Light,  the  light 
became  the  first  veil  hiding  Him.  Therefore  it  is  that 
no  man  hath  seen  the  Father  at  any  time,  and  when  we 
speak  of  His  power  and  wisdom  and  purpose  we  have  no 
real  idea  of  these  attributes,  which  arc  known  to  us  only 
as  mediate  and  limited  ;  and  when  we  say  that  He  is 
Love,  we  express  not  the  reality,  since  our  knowledge 
i)f  love  like  that  of  light  is  from  broken  images  only. 
I'rom  the  beginning,  then,  is  the  eternal  life  hidden, 
and  though  the  veil  hiding  it  be  light  itself,  that  which 
is  concealed  is  beyonil  our  expression  in  thought  or 
speech. 

.At   every  successive   stage   of   the   cosmic   develop- 


84  A  STUDY   OF  DEATH 

ment,  or  rather  envelopment,  there  seems  to  be  a  fresh 
surrender  of  potence  and  sentience,  though  with  great- 
er truth  it  may  be  said  that  these  are  more  and  more 
veiled ;  the  organic  tending  toward  variability  and  fal- 
libility as  compared  with  the  inorganic,  and  the  vege- 
table instinct  being  surer  than  the  animal.  With  the 
growing  complexity  there  is  increased  uncertainty  and 
indirection,  until  we  reach  the  hesitancy  and  vacillation 
of  rational  volition. 

As  heat  is  given  up  in  the  contraction  of  the  earth 
and  the  incrustation  of  its  surface,  and  as  the  solar  fire 
is  subdued  to  a  lambent  flame  which  runs  through  all 
the  variegated  terrestrial  life,  so  is  the  universal  pulse 
modulated  more  and  more  down  to  its  measured  beat 
in  the  animal ;  and  with  the  increase  of  temperament, 
adaptation  considered  as  correlation,  and  outward  cor- 
respondence, interaction  and  interdependence  are  more 
pronounced,  just  as  with  the  loss  of  heat  there  is  great- 
er conductivity.  Sentience,  which  is  really  mightier  in 
the  less  specialised  forms  of  life,  yet  appears  outward- 
ly and  in  definite  expression  more  intense  and  finer 
in  more  complex  forms,  and  is  more  communicable 
mediately  as  it  is  the  more  patent.  With  the  veiling 
comes  gain  as  well  as  loss,  so  that  we  properly  think 
of  later  forms  as  more  advanced,  though  in 

Gain  of  Per-  ... 

spective  in    a  Certain  sense  division  signifies  diminution. 

Specialisation,  o-    i  ,     •  -i  i       i  ^i 

Sight  IS  possible  because  the  eye  is  a  re- 
fractive lens,  and  thus  only  because  the  solar  light  is 
tempered  by  the  medium  of  an  atmosphere.  The 
blind  feeling  of  which  sight  is  a  specialisation  is  a 
surer  sentience,  a  divination  knowing  no  distance  or 
indirection,  a  wisdom  therefore  whose  ways  are  never 


THE  DiyiDFD  LINING  85 

missed,  an  unbroken  clairvoyance  ;  but  the  intense, 
confined  specialised  sense  of  ocular  vision  is  an  out- 
ward openness,  aware  of  expansion.  That  which  was 
once  blind,  feeling  its  way  by  dead-reckoning,  like  a 
mole  in  the  dark,  now  takes  in  the  heavenly  blue  and 
(under  the  veil  of  night)  the  stars  beyond,  making  for 
itself  a  wondrous  perspective.  The  same  blind  feeling 
specialised  as  hearing  catches  vibrations  slower  than 
those  of  light,  making  for  itself  another  perspective  of 
beautiful  harmony. 


It  is  not  unity  which  is  divided  ;   our  conception  of 
unity  is  the  refle.v  of  our  thought  of  the  manifold.     It 
is  not  identity  which  is  diversified.     Absolute  homo- 
geneity as  the  initiative  of  a  universe  is  the 
most  sterile   mental   notion  ever  conceived    „  '°''."^ 

Reaction. 

in  the  attempt  of  philosophy  to  evade  the 
mystery  of  Creation.  From  such  homogeneity  there  is 
no  genetic  thoroughfare  —  no  way  out.  The  idea  of 
absolute  heterogeneity,  on  the  other  hand,  leads  only 
to  chaotic  distraction,  which  has  no  recourse,  no  reac- 
tion, no  way  back  reHe.xively  into  the  consistency  of  a 
universe.  The  genesis  itself — a  mystery  hidden  from 
human  comprehension,  yet  mystically  apprehended — 
is  action  and  reaction,  and  we  see  that  as  a  mani- 
festation it  involves  at  once  the  idea  of  otherness  and 
consubstantiality,  the  nearness  and  kinship,  at  every 
remove,  being  the  reflex  of  distance.  We  have  a  nie- 
chanical  and  therefore  inadequate  illustration  of  this 
action  and  reaction,  as  essentially  one  and  inseparable, 


86  A  STUDY  OF  DEATH 

in  all  tropical  movement.  Thus  the  earth  in  her  flight 
from  the  sun  is,  at  every  moment  of  the  flight,  return- 
ing ;  as  in  her  rotation  her  turning  from  the  sun  is  at 
every  point  a  turning  to  him.  The  reaction  is  in  the 
action,  and  we  cannot  logically  separate  the  one  from 
the  other ;  and  when  we  separate  them  historically,  we 
make  the  diversification  primary,  supposing  flight  to 
precede  return,  repulsion  attraction,  and  all  function- 
ing its  inhibition.  Following  this  rule  of  precedence, 
we  should  reverse  the  procedure  of  Herbert  Spencer's 
synthetic  philosophy  and  give  the  initiative  to  hetero- 
geneity. 

XIV 

Certainly  it  is  the  reflex,  the  feeling  of  the  ancient 

bond  of  nearness,  that  is  more  and  more  hidden  from 

the  planetary  prodigal  in  that  far-country  perspective 

which  at  every  step  becomes  more  bewilder- 

urpnsean    -^       j^  j^.^  Varied  charm  of  beauty  and  de- 

t  amilianty.         "^  •' 

light.  There  is  no  new  surprise  which  has 
not  in  it  some  homely  reminiscence,  but,  by  the  very 
urgency  of  destiny,  it  is  the  surprise  itself  which  cap- 
tivates and  absorbs,  leading  the  wanderer  further 
afield. 

XV 

There  is  this  preoccupation  and  expectancy  in  what 
we  call  the  inorganic  world.  Here,  at  some  critical 
point,  there  is  a  sudden  departure  from  the  uniform 
succession  of  phenomena,  and  a  new  synthesis  is  ap- 
parent, not  explicable  by  any  antecedent  situation  or  by 


THi:  niyim-n  i.nnNG  87 

any  elements  visibly  entering  into  tlie  first  combina- 
tion. These  transformations  do  not  come  about  ac- 
cording to  such  laws  of  causation  as  are  formulated 
by  the  human  mind  for  the  explanation  of  phenomena 
that  come  within  the  range  of  conscious  volition.  IJy 
no  calculation  based  upon  any  deductions  of  science 
could  these  surprising  changes  have  been  anticipated. 
"  If  we  conceive,"  says  Mr.  N.  S.  Shaler,*  "  an  intelli- 
gent being  looking  upon  a  mass  of  nebulous 
matter  having  only  those  forms  of  associa-  ''"'^p"''^  •^'"' 

"  ■'  I  rophccy. 

tion  which  are  possible  in  gases,  we  must 
believe  that  such  a  being  would  have  been  entirely 
unable,  if  his  intelligence  were  less  than  infinite,  to 
form  any  conception  of  the  results  which  would  arise 
when  that  matter  came  to  take  the  present  shape  of 
this  earth."  But  that  intelligence  which  is  immanent 
in  these  transformations  is  prophetically  expectant, 
seeing  the  end  from  the  beginning.  It  is  not,  there- 
fore, to  be  supposed  that  to  this  profound  intelligence 
there  is  no  delight  in  the  wonderful  surprises  of  the 
ever-changing  world.  To  man  also  belongs  a  prophet- 
ic vision,  however  hidden  or  obscured,  looking  iner- 
rantly  toward  the  Things  to  Come,  and  it  is  because  of 
this  undefined  and  sure  expectation,  and  not  because 
of  anything  outwardly  seen  in  the  novel  wonders  of  pro- 
gressive life,  that  he  has  delight  in  them  ;  while  a  life 
that  in  all  its  changing  scenes  should  be  the  exact  fulfil- 
ment of  definite  mental  anticipation  would,  on  the  other 
hand,  be  tiresome,  not  answering  to  the  unseen  hope. 
Nor  is  there  such  uniformity  of  routine  even  in  the 

*   /'//«•  Inti-rpntiition  of  Xatuit-,  p.  55. 


88  A  STUDY  OF  DEATH 

succession  of  grand  cycles  as  to  mar  the  divine  delight 
in  creation.  If  at  the  end  of  each  of  these  cycles  the 
entire  universe  is  dissolved,  the  synthesis  of  a  new  uni- 
verse would  not  be  the  exact  repetition  of  that  which 
preceded  it.  No  cycle  of  life  returns  into  itself ;  the 
death  completing  it  is  always  a  transformation. 


XVI 

In  the  progressive  cosmic  involvement  the  reality  of 
Life— in  its  essential  attributes — seems  to  be  more  and 
more  hidden  beneath'  appearance.  Form  hides  the 
formative  ;  and  form,  persistent  and  held  in  apparent 
suspense,  veils  transformation.  The  appearance  of 
uniformity  in  the  physical  world  especially  impresses 
our  human  intelligence,  which  is  confined  in  its  ob- 
servation and  investigation  to  a  very  limited  period 
,,  .^  of  cosmic  development — the  period  of  s;reat- 

Uniformity  '^_   _  ^  _  °     _ 

Veiling  Trans-  cst  apparent  Stability.  If  our  point  of  view 
crm  ion.  ^^^^^  transferred  to  an  epoch  indefinitely  re- 
mote, before  the  appearance  of  organic  life,  while  we 
would  have  the  sense  of  order,  yet  would  uniformity 
seem  a  transparent  veil.  We  were  not  indeed  shut 
out  from  that  simplicity ;  rather  are  we  shut  into  the 
l^resent  manifold  complexity.  The  quality  of  life  is  the 
same,  whatever  the  situation  ;  and  its  manifestation  in 
the  simplest  form  was  a  Habit,  however  loose  and  flow- 
ing in  its  longer  waves  of  jDulsation  and  its  marvellous- 
ly swift  alternations  —  its  appearings  and  vanishings. 
When  he  who  is  eternally  the  representative  of  man 
spoke  of  sharing  with  him  the  glory  of  the  Father  be- 


THii  niyiDFn  living  89 

fore  ever  the  world  was,  he  was  speaking  of  our  native 
heritage.  The  divine  nature  never  had  a  habit  that 
was  not  also  human,  and  the  man  we  know — the  ulti- 
mate creative  manifestation — still  retiects  that  naturL*, 
as  its  very  image. 

That  period  of  comparative  simplicity,  when  the 
world  which  we  call  inorganic  and  lifeless  was  the 
only  living  world,  was  vast  as  the  ocean  when  meas- 
ured against  the  mere  island  in  time  which  is  occu- 
pied by  animate  existence,  as  we  know  it,  in  all  its 
wondrous  variety.  Now  are  we  sheathed  in  integu- 
ments that  hide  the  older  world  which  we  still  unwit- 
tingly inhabit.  When  the  darkness  of  our  little  night 
lays  open  to  our  eyes  the  starry  spaces  we  may  still 
behold  the  plasmic  milky- way  of  that  long  night  of 
time  whose  possibilities  were  mightier  than  we  can 
even  dream  in  such  sleep  as  now  befalls  us. 

What  we  know  as  desire  is  away  from  all  this,  pro- 
jecting its  embodiments  into  that  narrow  island  of 
specialised  life  which,  after  all,  still  rests  upon  that 
hidden  ocean.  We  bask  in  what  seems  to  us  the 
nearer  and  more  familiar  sunshine,  and  turning  from 
that  simple  estate  which  we  still  hold  in  the  darkness 
and  which  still  holds  us— that  older  deep  which  ever 
felt  the  brooding  Spirit  of  Life  —  we  rejoice  in  the 
broken  lights  ajid  casual  acquaintances,  in  the  color 
and  temperament,  in  the  poise  and  modulation  of  a 
suspended  workl.  We  glory  in  difference  as  a  dis- 
tinction and  in  individual  isolation  as  the  proper  in- 
tegrity of  an  organism,  its  inviolable  virtue. 

To  us,  in  the  suspense  of  a  fixed  order,  the  process- 
es of  Nature  seem  to  be  movements  in  cvcles  that  re- 


90  A  STUDY  OF  DEATH 

turn  into  themselves.  "  The  sun  ariseth,  and  the  sun 
goeth  down,"  says  the  Preacher,  "  and  hasteth  to  the 
place  where  he  ariseth.  The  wind  goeth  toward  the 
South  and  turneth  about  unto  the  North ;  it  turneth 
about  continually  in  its  course,  and  the  wind  returneth 
again  to  its  circuits.  All  the  rivers  run  into  the  sea.  .  . . 
Unto  the  place  whither  the  rivers  go  thither  they  go 
again."  Science,  especially  in  the  departments  of 
physics  and  chemistry,  easily  regards  these  closed 
circuits  as  somehow  independent  of  and  isolated  from 
creative  action  and  reaction.  The  physical  world  is 
thus  considered  as  inanimate,  having  neither  life  nor 
death  but  only  motion  proceeding  from  inherent  forces 
and  according  to  laws  of  its  own.  So  completely  is 
the  universe  separated  from  a  personal  creator  that 
even  those  who  believe  that  it  was  originally  His 
creation  accept  the  illusion  of  delegated  and  second- 
ary forces  that  are  like  the  servants  of  the  vineyard 
abandoned  by  its  master,  who  has  gone  abroad,  but 
who  may  at  his  option  return  and  in  some  marvellous 
way  assert  his  dominion. 

But  in  reality  God  is  always  in  His  world,  and  al- 
ways working  the  great  miracle  of  creation. 

XVII 

"  No  man  hath  seen  the  Father    at  any  time,"  but 
the  Son  shall  reveal  him.     The  appearance 

Organic  Life,        -  -it  i  i  i         r    i 

a  Pre-Messi-    of  Organic  lifc  upou  the  earth  was  the  lul. 
anic  Reveia-    fli,i-,e,^t  of  what  uiav  without  irrcverencc  be 

tion.  ■' 

called    the  Messianic  expectation    of   Nat- 
ure.    It  was  indeed   a  miraculous   conception    of  the 


THR  niyiPFD  i.iyisG  91 

Spirit  of  Life,  and  was  not  witliout  wonderful  prepa- 
ration and  prophetic  adumbration. 

The  later  and  closer  scrutiny  of  the  processes  of  the 
mineral  kingdom  show  that  in  many  respects  these  are 
not  so  sharply  distinguished  from  those  of  living  or. 
ganisms  as  was  formerly  supposed.  "It  has  been 
found  that  finely  divided  particles  of  many  substances 
when  suspended  in  a  fluid  will,  under  the  inriuence  of 
some  forces  as  yet  not  well  understood,  take  on  an  in- 
cessant movement.  So  perfectly  does  this  motion  re- 
semble that  of  some  of  the  microscopic  forms  of  the 
lower  simple  organisms  that  naturalists  at  first  sup- 
posed that  in  observing  these  movements  they  were 
dealing  with  living  beings.  The  crystals  of  the  rocks 
perform  functions  which  were  once  supposed  to  be 
peculiar  to  animals  and  plants  ;  they  undergo  changes 
in  their  constitution,  often  taking  in  new  materials, 
which  they  sometimes  decompose  into  their  elements 
and  rebuild  in  the  new  growth.  So,  too,  crystals  are 
in  a  way  capable  of  multiplying  themselves,  for  when 
one  begins  to  form,  others  of  the  same  species,  as  it 
were,  sprout  from  it,  much  in  the  manner  of  certain 
lowly  forms  which  are  certainly  alive."  * 

After  millions  of  years  of  cosmic  preparation  the  cell 
appears  —  the  precious  nursling  of  the  ages.  Yet,  if 
a  human  intelligence  could  be  supposed  to  have  been 
present  in  the  world  before  this  remarkable  advent,  it 
would  have  been  unable  to  mentally  conjecture  what 
was  about  to  emerge  from  the  matri.x  of  a  world  ih.ii 
seemed  already  so  old  and  barren  ,  nor  indeed  would 

*  T/u-  Intcr{>ntation  of  XiUttre,  l)y  N.  S.  Slialcr,  pp.  1 1 1.  112. 


92  A  STUDY  OF  DEATH 

such  an  intelligence,  brought  face  to  face  with  this 
long-expected  child  of  Time,  so  lowly  at  its  birth, 
wrapped,  as  it  were,  in  swaddling-clothes  and  ignomin- 
iously  stalled,  have  had  any  prescience  of  its  mighty 
meaning  and  mission. 

Nevertheless  this  was,  as  we  now  can  see,  a  new 
creation,  a  transformation  so  wonderful  that  only  be- 
cause thereof  does  the  world  seem  to  us  to  be  alive. 
The  Prince  was  already  within  the  portals  of  the  Pal- 
ace of  the  Sleeping  Earth,  and  the  heart  of  the  virgin 
planet  was  stirred  by  a  new  dream — the  vision  of  a 
lord  to  come  who  was  older  than  the  Sun.  The  Sun 
also  knew,  for  he  was  the  flaming  Witness  of  the  Spirit 
of  Life,  Who  was  now  to  begin  His  earthly  ministra- 
tion with  mighty  miracles,  turning  water  into  wine  and 
wine  into  blood.  "  He  must  increase,  but  I  shall  de- 
crease." 

Already,  indeed,  from  the  beginning  of  cosmic  spec- 
ialisation, there  had  been  the  diminution  and  descent 
— the  macrocosmic  yielding  to  the  microcosmic  mys- 
tery, the  whole  magnificent  universe  narrowing  its  cir- 
cles, contracting  its  spheres,  veiling  its  potencies  and 
lessening  its  velocities,  stooping  down  to  serve  the 
coming  Prince  of  a  new  kingdom,  all  its  strong,  wise 
ministrants  gathering  at  his  nativity,  like  worshipping 
Magi,  bringing  special  gifts,  also,  like  the  gold  and 
myrrh  and  frankincense  of  the  Eastern  Kings,  signify- 
ing Abundance,  Burial,  and  Ascension. 


THii  DiyiniU)  ijyiNii  93 


will 

The  cell  is  not  the  introduction  of  life  into  a  dead 
world.  The  universe  was  from  the  first  living  and  sen- 
tient in  its  macrocosmic  order,  organic  in  that  order. 
The  term  inorganic  is  not  properly  applica- 
ble to  what  was  from  the  first  an  organism  Mystery  in  a 
and  constantly  reaching  forward  to  more  "  '*  °""' 
complex  organisation.  Nevertheless  the  cell  marks  a 
pivotal  and  critical  point  in  the  progress  of  existence. 
Its  appearance  is  a  surprise,  a  fresh  embodiment  of  the 
all-shaping  Power  and  Wisdom  ;  but  there  is  nothing 
more  mysterious  in  a  germ  that  grows  than  in  a  min- 
eral which  crystallises;  it  is  the  old  mystery  in  a  new 
shape. 

The  new  integration  is  not  explicable  through  what 
precedes  it ;  it  would  be  truer  to  say  that  it  is  the 
explication  of  all  its  antecedents.  It  is  itself  a  new 
hiding  of  life,  a  fresh  strain  of  cosmic  tension,  a  fur- 
ther division  and  suspension,  a  more  discrete  modula- 
tion, a  more  exquisite  temperament.  The  outward  bal- 
ance of  things,  already  so  nicely  adjusted,  maintained 
tiirough  oppositions  and  contradictions,  through  at- 
tractions and  repulsions,  through  ascents  and  descents, 
may  have  been  suddenly  disturbed  through  some  vast 
dissolution  of  existing  forms,  liberating  mighty  forces 
for  a  new  continence,  and  so  have  regained  equilibra- 
tion by  the  storage  of  this  precious  argosy,  freshly 
launched  upon  the  ocean  of  existence.  Hut,  even  so, 
we  are  only  attempting  to  express  the  niystery  irj  the 
terms  of  an  outward  ccjuation,  what  is  lost  on  the  one 


94  A   STUDY  OF  DE/iTH 

side  being  gained  on  the  othei",  as  the  ascent  of  one 
arm  of  the  scale  is  a  descent  of  the  other.  Dissipa- 
tion of  energy  is  tlie  concomitant  of  all  integration ; 
but  these  terms  are  not  related  to  each  other  as  cause 
and  effect  (any  more  than  one-half  of  a  circle  is  the 
cause  or  effect  of  the  other) ;  they  are  merely  comple- 
mentary.    The  specialisation  is  creative. 

The  evolutionist,  while  he  helps  us  to  see  what  is  the 
true  outward  sequence,  confesses  his  inability  to  show 
causation  in  the  sequence.  "  The  ultimate  mystery — 
the  association  of  vital  properties  with  the  enormously 
complex  chemical  compound  known  as  protoplasm — 
remains  unsolved.  Why  the  substance  protoplasm 
should  manifest  sundry  properties  which  are  not  mani- 
fested by  any  of  its  constituent  substances,  we  do  not 
know ;  and  very  likely  we  shall  never  know.  But 
whether  the  mystery  be  forever  insoluble  or  not,  it  can 
in  no  wise  be  regarded  as  a  solitary  mystery.  It  is 
equally  mysterious  that  starch  or  sugar  or  alcohol  should 
manifest  properties  not  displayed  by  their  elements — 
oxygen,  hydrogen,  and  carbon — when  uncombined.  It  is 
equally  mysterious  that  a  silvery  metal  and  a  suffocat- 
ing gas  should  by  their  union  become  transformed 
into  table-salt.  Yet,  however  mysterious,  the  fact  re- 
mains that  one  result  of  every  chemical  synthesis  is 
the  manifestation  of  a  new  set  of  properties.  The 
case  of  living  matter  or  protoplasm  is  in  no  wise  ex- 
ceptional." * 

*  John  Fiske's  Outlines  of  Cosmic  Philosophy,  vol.  i.,  y.  434. 


THE  nii/inr.i)  uyiMj  95 


xix 

This  protoplasm  is  the  nebulous  bcginninpj  of  what 
to  us  seems  like  a  distinct  universe,  peculiarly  open  to 
our  sympathetic  comprehension  because  of 
its  intimate  association  with  our  earthly  fort-  vouTmcnUn 
unes  and  destiny,  since  humanity  is  its  ulti-    «he  organic 

.   ,  .  Synthesis. 

mate  issue  and  fruition.  Physical  and  chem- 
ical processes  seem  remote  and  obscure  save  as  they 
come  into  immediate  contact  with  our  life  :  in  the  air  we 
breathe,  the  water  we  drink,  and  the  component  ele- 
ments of  the  food  we  eat;  in  the  minerals  which  lend 
themselves  to  our  use  in  various  ways  ,  and  in  the  lij^ht 
and  heat  and  electricity  which  seem  like  a  part  of  our 
vitality,  and  which  outwardly  are  elements  of  comfort 
or  disturbance,  conservation  or  destruction,  according; 
to  their  temperament.  And  beneath  these  is  the  univer- 
sal physical  bond  of  gravitation,  which  enters  into  the 
rising  wave  of  life,  in  certain  forms  of  attraction,  as  a 
ladder  of  ascent,  and  in  the  falling  as  a  lethal  burden. 
Modern  science  has  given  us  a  clearer  idea  of  these 
forces  and  elements  in  their  quantitative  relations,  and 
a  wider  and  more  etTective  adaptation  of  them  to  our 
use;  has  made  of  their  rhythmic  motions  a  fairy  tale 
for  wonder,  a  beautiful  poem;  has  shown  how  the 
world  has  given  harbourage  to  vegetable  and  animal 
life,  within  what  narrow  limits  of  temperature  is  possi- 
ble the  chemical  action  upon  which  molecular  organi- 
sation depends,  anil  within  what  still  narrower  linnts 
a  physiological  synthesis  can  be  maintained  ;  how  ele- 
nitMits  like  oxygen  and  hydrogen,  which  at  a  high  degree 


96  A  STUDY   OF  DEATH 

of  temperature  combine  to  form  watery  vapor,  may  at  a 
lower  degree  rest  side  by  side  for  independent  action, 
and  how  peculiarly  essential  is  nitrogen  to  the  storage  of 
animal  heat :  in  all  these  ways  indicating  the  care  and 
providence  of  a  loving  Father  in  preparing  a  dwelling- 
place  for  man.  But  we  are  so  involved  in  the  organic 
synthesis  that  we  translate  all  physical  terms  into  those 
which  are  more  intimately  familiar  to  us  through  our 
specialised  physiological  sensibility  and  mental  percep- 
tions, our  language  in  its  primary  meanings  leaning 
rather  to  the  former,  and,  in  its  secondar}',  to  the 
latter. 

In  the  period  of  naive  impressionism  the  whole  uni- 
verse was  humanised,  and  even  the  gods  were  included 
in  this  general  incarnation  ;  and,  considered  simply  as 
to  its  reality,  this  impression  was  profoundly  wise — a 
deeper  divination  than  the  human  reason  reaches  in 
its  supersensuous  mathematics  and  formal  knowledge, 
though  these  have  more  truth  of  perspective  and  a 
more  exact  discrimination.  The  extreme  rationalistic 
view  of  the  world  excludes  all  humor  from  its  dry  light ; 
reduces  the  sensibility  to  the  humble  offices  of  a  ser- 
vant to  the  intellect — otherwise  burying  it  out  of  sight; 
and  rejects  physiological  and  anthropomorphic  inter- 
pretation. This  is  the  inevitable  tendency  of  special- 
isation, which  at  every  step  is  a  new  veiling  of  life — 
of  its  essential  wisdom  as  of  its  potency.  The  truth  of 
chemistry  is  not  the  truth  of  physiology,  as  is  shown 
by  the  inadequacy  of  the  chemical  analysis  of  food  as 
a  test  of  its  physiological  action.  So  the  truth  of 
physiology  is  not  that  of  psychology.  We  see,  then, 
how  remote  and  alien  the  true  and  proper  life  of  what 


THF.    DiyiDFA)   LiriNG  97 

we  call  the  inorcjanic  world  must  be  from  our  mental 
vision  and  even  from  our  sensibility. 


XX 

We  are  so  accustomed  to  rej^ard  dilTerent  forms  of  life 
as  higher  or  lower  according;  to  their  place  in  a  progres- 
sive series,  and  thus  to  unduly  emphasise  the  super- 
lative importance  of  the  most  specialised  Higher  and 
existence,  that  our  view  is  distorted.  In  Lower  Life. 
tiiis  way  we  come  to  depreciate  the  living  values  of 
pre  human  nature.  We  form  the  same  comparative 
estimate  of  ditYerent  periods  of  human  history,  under- 
rating the  eras  of  greatest  simplicity ,  ami  in  like  man- 
ner, considering  an  individual  life,  we  attribute  a  su- 
perior excellence  to  maturity,  as  if  we  should  prefer 
-August  to  May.  Consistently  with  such  judgment,  we 
might  reasonably  question  why  manhood  is  not  sus- 
tained at  its  ascendant ;  why  one  generation  shoukl  pass 
away  and  another  come,  repeating  the  crudeness  of 
infancy;  why  the  sun  is  not  maintained  at  the  zenith; 
why  civilisations  disappear;  and  why,  indeed,  all  sys- 
tems are  doomed  to  dissolution.  Reversing  our  pref- 
erence in  any  of  these  cases,  our  view  would  have  the 
same  fault  of  disproportion. 

Our  human  conduct,  under  the  extreme  limitation  of 
arbitrary  and  fallible  choice,  is  so  much  a  matter  of 
experimentation  and  discipline,  involving  moral  prefer- 
ence, wherein  rising  is  a  betterment  and  falling  a  vili- 
fication, and  having  for  its  ideal  field  some  lofty  pla- 
teau of  stable  and  perfect  goodness,  unmixed  witjj  evil 
7 


98  A  STUDY  OF  DEATH 

and  undisturbed  by  reactions,  that  we  come  to  regard 
the  progression  of  all  life  as  having  this  moral  char- 
acter, as  if  the  Creator  were  in  the  same  toils  of  ex- 
perimentation, learning  to  create,  and  improving  with 
each  new  creation.  To  rid  ourselves  of  this  illusion, 
whereby  our  limitations  are  transferred  to  the  In- 
finite, we  have  only  to  see  that  while  there  is  al- 
ways the  world  to  come,  it  is  not  a  better  world, 
according  to  moral  preference,  but  a  new  world ;  that 
the  creative  life  repents  of  the  good  grown  old  as  well 
as  of  the  inveterate  ill ;  that  this  life  is  in  its  essential 
quality  a  transforming,  regenerative  life. 

The  vital  perspective  is  that  of  a  circle,  wherein 
compensation  is  everywhere  apparent — not  a  circle  re- 
turning into  itself,  but  involving  endless  permutation 
and  variability.  We  need  not  resort  to  the  familiar 
similitude  of  a  spiral  ascent.  To  the  undisturbed  spir- 
itual insight  there  is  no  higher  or  lower,  no  superior- 
ity of  the  molecular  to  the  molar,  of  the  chemical  to 
the  physical,  of  the  physiological  to  the  chemical,  or 
of  the  psychical  to  the  physiological.  As  has  been 
already  said,  the  quality  of  life  is  the  same  whatever 
the  situation. 

When  we  think  about  nebulous  expansion,  ethereal 
vibration,  molar  or  molecular  attractions  and  repul- 
sions, our  thought  is  empty  as  compared  with  our  sym- 
pathetic apprehension  of  those  actions  and  passions 
which  belong  to  what  we  call  the  realm  of  biology. 


THE  DiyiDFD  UyiNG  99 


XXI 

Our  vision  of   life  is  like  that  of  Jacob  at   Bethel, 
one  of  ascending  and  descending  angels;  but  the  an 
frc-ls  descending  are  the  same  angels  that  ascend.     If 
the  world  were  only  "inorganic,"  and  such  only  it  is 
believed  to  have  been  through  the  <rreater 

^  "^  Why  the  In- 

part  of  its  existence,  it  would  still  have  all  <>ri^anic  seems 
the  excellence  of  life  in  its  essential  quality 
— an  ineffable  excellence  of  which  we  have  no  concep- 
tion. Its  ascending  angels  for  the  most  part  elude 
our  vision,  only  its  descendent  ministration  being  ap- 
parent to  us.  The  side  of  the  inorganic  world  present- 
ed to  the  organic  is  the  dying  side — chemical  dissolu- 
tion next  to  physiological  integration.  The  crescent 
organism  confronts  a  world  which  is  dying  that  it  may 
live.  The  cosmic  accommodations  which  have  made  the 
earth  man's  dwelling-place  have  been  renunciations  of 
life  in  his  behalf;  and  the  dead  moon  is  a  nightly  re- 
minder of  that  Calvary  from  which  Nature  stretches 
forth  to  us  her  skeleton  hands  and  shows  us  her 
hard,  dumb  countenance.  When  our  Newton  comes, 
it  is  in  the  autumn  field  that  he  finds  in  a  falling  ap- 
ple the  suggestion  of  the  universal  law — that  of  gravi- 
tation, the  symbol  of  death. 

The  sun  himself  is  dying,  giving  forth  his  light  and 
heat ;  he  is  a  true  martyr — the  witness  of  the  Lord  ; 
and  the  coal  deposits  buried  in  our  earth  ages  ago  are 
like  the  famed  ossuaries  of  martyrs,  having  stored-up 
virtues  for  miracles  of  warmth  and  light  and  healing. 

We  love  to  dwell  upon  this  descent  of  the  Lord  and 


loo  A  STUDY   OF  DEATH 

his  angels  in  the  world  of  inorganic  matter,  which  we 
call  dead  ;  in  the  light  and  heat  and  the  refreshing 
rain  ;  in  the  virtues  of  the  cooling  earth  ;  in  chemical 
disintegrations,  and  to  see  that  it  is  all  a  descending 
ministration  for  the  lifting  up  of  organisms.  It  is  a 
view  of  the  world  which  invests  with  our  pathetic 
affection  its  very  debris  and  the  dust  we  tread  upon. 

Nature,  in  our  observation  of  her  apparently  closed 
circuits,  is  known  to  us,  outside  of  organisms,  mainly 
in  her  descents  for  the  risings  of  these.  What  are  her 
own  proper  ascensions  for  this  beneficent  ruin,  or 
what  is  her  own  World  to  Come — her  transformation, 
answering  to  our  Resurrection — is  hidden  from  us. 

Biology,  notwithstanding  its  rigid  exclusion  of  the 
inorganic  world  from  its  proper  scope,  furnishes  sug- 
gestions for  the  poetic  and  spiritual  rehabilitation  of 
that  world  in  the  human  imagination, 

"And  in  our  life  alone  doth  Nature  live, 

Ours  is  her  wedding  garment,  ours  her  shroud." 

Modern  sentimentalism  has  undoubtedly  carried  this 
ideal  rehabilitation  to  an  extreme,  transferring  to  Nat- 
ure solicitudes  wholly  alien  to  her  and  purely  human, 
and  needing,  therefore,  for  its  correction,  the  scientific 
comprehension  of  what  is  peculiar  to  physiological  and 
psychical  specialisation. 


XXII 

The  cell  germ  is  the  central  sun  of  the  physiological 
planetary   system  —  the    beginning    of    a   new    career 


THi:  DIl/lDllD   LIVING  loi 

of  prodigal  wanderinj;.  The  earliest  and  simplest  or- 
ganisms are  unicellular,  as  if  a  new  kind  of  universe 
were    bejiun    in    a   single  -  niansioned    econ-    „     ... 

"  _       '^  _       Speculisa- 

omy.      I»ut   wliat    singular   potency   in    this   tionutscx 

.     '    ,.    .        ,       .,^,  ...  .         ,      '  ,     and  DmiIi. 

Simplicity!  liiis  is  shown  in  the  ease  and 
quickness  of  reparation,  by  which  any  part  of  the  or- 
ganism lost  or  destroyed  is  restored.  if  the  body 
is  cut  in  twain,  each  part  continues  its  independent 
life  ;  or  rather  we  should  say  that  such  separation  has 
not  at  this  stage  of  development  the  meaning  which  it 
comes  to  have  when  the  organism  becomes  more  com- 
plex, consisting  of  interdependent  members.  While 
identity  seems  to  be  emphasised,  yet  there  is  the  ten- 
dency to  diversification.  Reproduction  is  by  division, 
by  simple  fission.  In  the  infusoria  reproduction  is 
preceded  by  a  comatose  state  resembling  death,  an 
arrest  of  activity  during  which  the  identity  (jf  the 
parts  soon  to  be  separated  seems  to  be  assuredly  es- 
tablished ;  and  after  the  fission  there  is  no  distinction 
by  which  one  part  may  be  designated  as  the  parent 
rather  than  the  other.  Such  organisms,  as  Dr.  Weiss- 
mann  has  shown,  have  a  kind  of  immortality,  suffering 
death  only  as  an  accident.  The  amceba  of  to-day  is 
tlie  original  amoeba. 

With  the  multiplication  and  diversification  of  cells  in 
later  and  more  specialised  organisms,  there  is  allotment 
of  function,  a  division  of  labor  and  an  interdependence 
of  co-ordinate  parts,  and  the  same  appearance  of  dele- 
gated powers  which  is  characteristic  of  comple.x  econ- 
omies, just  as  there  seem  to  be  secondary  forces  in  the 
inorganic  world,  which  wc  think  of  as  acting  indepen- 
dently and  yet  interdependently  as  mutually  related. 


I02  A  STUDY   OF  DEATH 

With  the  specialisation  of  sex — a  divulsion  for  union, 
a  repulsion  for  attraction  —  death  also  appears  as  a 
specialisation,  entering  the  world  hand  in  hand  with 
love.  From  this  point  the  variation  goes  on  with  re- 
markable rapidity. 


XXIII 

The  appearance  of  organic  life  upon  the  earth  as  a 

prelusive  analogue  of  the  appearance  of  the  Christ-life 

in  the  human  cycle  has  already  been  suggested.     It  is 

thus  seen  to  be  one  of  the  successive  revelations  of  the 

creative  Logos.     The  analogy  would  require 

ofu^c^if  ^  separate    thesis    for   its   full  elaboration. 

It  is  only  important   here   that  we    should 

draw  attention  to  a  few  points  touching  our  present 

theme. 

1.  The  organic  involution  is  the  apparent  beginning 
of  a  motion  of  return.  It  is  the  beginning  of  the  dis- 
closure of  conscious  life,  reflecting  Godward.  This 
attitude  of  the  vegetable  and  animal  kingdoms  was 
recognised  by  Swedenborg. 

2.  The  organic  plasma,  having  its  matrix  in  an  ap- 
parently dead  world,  is  the  beginning  of  life  in  a  pro- 
cession of  generations.  It  is  the  physical  analogue  of 
that  childhood  which  is  the  type  of  the  Christ-life. 

3.  Cell-life,  in  its  simplest  and  most  plastic  forms, 
has  a  marvellous  potential  energy,  with  spontaneous 
power  of  self-reparation,  and  thus  foreshadows  miracle- 
working  and  redemption. 

4.  The  organism  grows,  and  is  thus  the  physical  sym- 


THli  niVIDliD  Liyisc.  105 

bol  of  the  increase  and  :\utliority  of  the  "more  abun- 
dant "  Christ-life. 

5.  The  most  significant  point  of  the  analogy  is  the 
concurrent  specialisation  of  sex  and  death  :  that  with 
the  love  which  is  the  basis  of  genetic  kinship  came  a 
new  mortality,  just  as  in  the  spiritual  development  of  hu- 
manity the  love  which  was  the  ground  of  a  divine-human 
fellowship  was  bound  up  with  a  divine-human  death. 

These  points,  more  fully  dwelt  upon  hereafter,  are 
here  brought  together  as  a  natural  introduction  to  the 
consideration  of  the  organic  movement  toward  incar- 
nation. 


XXIV 

Certain  aspects  of  life,  elsewhere  hidden,  are  visibly 
revealed  or  suggested  in  the  realm  of  physiological  ac- 
tivity. P'or  while  the  embodiments  of  this  realm  are 
veils  hiding  life,  and  are  indeed  more  complex,  a  closer 
network  and  imprisonment,  than  are  the  manifestations 
of  physical  and  chemical  energy,  they  are  at 
the  same  time  more  open  to  our  study  and  ''^>*'"''«'"' 
comprehension.  Their  history  is  more  re- 
cent, and  h.is  left  its  traces  in  fossil  structures  em- 
bedded in  the  rocks.  Many  of  the  earliest  species  of 
organic  life  remain  in  living  specimens  upon  the  sur- 
face of  the  earth  ftjr  our  observation  of  function  as  well 
as  of  structure.  Moreover,  to  us  as  a  part  of  this  realm 
— its  ultimate  issue  and  consummation — there  are  in- 
timate disclosures  of  its  processes  in  our  own  sensi- 
bililv  and  consciousness.  Wc  know  what  desire  is  and 
aversion.  Iiope  anil  fear,  ple.isure  and  |)ain.  action  .uul 


104  A  STUDY  OF  DEATH 

passion,  faculty  and  capacity,  aspiration  and  depres- 
sion, sympathy  and  conflict,  confinement  and  release, 
rest  and  disturbance,  bounty  and  want,  demand  and 
renunciation  ;  and  we  know  that  structure  is  for  these, 
and  not  these  for  structure.  We  breathe  and  eat  and 
sleep  and  love  and  die  ;  and  we  have  a  sense  of  our 
incarnate  action  and  passion  as  such,  and  apart  from 
considerations  transcending  physiological  limitations. 
Beneath  these  is  the  eternal  ground  of  these,  the  Word 
which  becomes  flesh,  and  which  in  the  flesh  has  again 
its  glorious  appearance  as  the  Word  ;  but  we  are  now 
considering  what  revelation  of  life  there  is  in  the  won- 
derful organic  development  of  incarnation  itself,  ex- 
cluding from  the  scope  of  our  contemplation  that 
specialised  intelligence  which  distinguishes  man  from 
other  animals. 

The  transformations  by  which  the  "  inorganic  "  world 
has  come  into  its  present  state  are  hidden  from  us, 
whereas  in  the  historic  development  of  organisms  the 
series,  though  not  present  to  our  view  in  its  complete- 
ness, is  to  such  an  extent  observable  or  indicated  as  to 
be  profoundly  impressive.  Apart  from  the  historic 
series,  there  is  everywhere  open  to  our  observation  a 
miracle  of  growing  life  which  directly  suggests  the  cre- 
ative power.  Nature  becomes  to  us  a  Book  of  Genesis. 
We  seem  everywhere  to  hear  that  first  of  all  command- 
ments, Be  fruitful  and  multiply.  And  in  this  book  of 
Genesis  how  inevitably  does  the  mind  pass  from  the 
first  chapter,  in  which  the  earth  brings  forth  the  herb 
yielding  seed  and  the  fruit-tree  of  every  kind,  whose 
seed  is  in  itself,  and  every  living  creature,  multiplying 
its  kind,  to  the  second  chapter,  in  which  it  is  declared  ' 


THll  DiyiDED  Lll^lNG  105 

that  all  these  were  created  before  their  appearance— 
tlie  plant  "before  it  was  in  the  earth  and  every  herb  of 
the  field  before  it  grew."  The  growth  is  the  outward 
manifestation  of  that  genetic  quality  which  is  the  eternal 
attribute  of  boundless  and  abounding  life. 


x\v 

We  have  seen  th;it  death,  as  a  specialisation,  enters 
the  world  with  love.  There  is  an  adumbration  of  this 
association  in  the  nearness  of  all  desire  to  a  kind  of 
death.     Nutrition  is  the  rising  of  one  wave 

I  1      ■  1  /■  1  I      Nutrition. 

next  to  the  subsidence  of  some  otiier,  and 
the  wave  that  rises  is  not  the  same  wave  that  falls. 
Growth  is  genetic  transformation.  This  nutrition  is 
one  of  the  most  suggestive  of  the  object-lessons  fur- 
nished by  organic  life.  The  nucleus  of  a  germ  is  first 
manifest  as  a  living  thing  in  feeding  upon  its  envel- 
oping substance  or  integument.  In  the  case  of  a  seed, 
so  long  as  the  outward  muniment  about  it  is  secure 
from  dissolution,  its  power  is  latent  ;  but  being  buried 
in  the  earth,  where  outwardly  it  is  in  peril,  it  inwardly 
escapes,  is  liberated  from  its  imprisonment,  and  feeds 
upon  its  crumbling  prison  -walls.  The  nourishment 
thus  begun  is  in  the  same  way  extended.  The  tiame 
once  kindled  upon  the  altar  spreads,  devouring  sub- 
stances beyond  its  original  source  of  alimentation. 
The  vegetable,  rooted  in  the  earth,  feeds  upon  the  ele- 
ments that  come  to  it.  these  being  broken  for  it,  dis- 
solving for  its  integrity.  The  animal  carries  its  roots 
about  with  it,  having  vulunlarv  locomotion,  and  in  its 


io6  A  STUDY  OF  DEATH 

wider  range  of  selection  compels  its  victims.  The  de- 
scent of  the  inorganic  is  for  the  rising  of  the  vegetable, 
which,  transforming  the  material  for  its  subsistence 
from  the  earth  and  air,  becomes  itself  a  broken  sacri- 
fice for  a  new  transubstantiation,  falling  for  the  rising 
of  the  animal.  From  the  first  appearance  of  a  cell  to 
the  advent  of  man  stretch  millions  of  years,  and  at  his 
appearance  the  world  has  become  his  pasture,  through 
numberless  varieties  of  vegetable  and  animal  life.  The 
Lord  is  the  shepherd.  There  has  been  this  shepherd- 
ing from  the  beginning  of  organic  existence,  life  feed- 
ing upon  broken  life.  The  functioning  of  organs  thus 
nourished  is  a  wave  of  motion  rising  next  to  the  dis- 
solution of  these  members.  And  there  are  waves 
beyond  these,  not  properly  within  the  scope  of  our 
present  consideration  —  the  continuation  of  the  de- 
scending ministration,  until  the  Lord  becomes  the 
shepherd  of  souls — always  a  dying  Lord. 


XXVI 

In  the  inorganic  world  we  more  especially  note  the 

division  involved  in  specialisation  and  the  progressive 

diminution,  as  in  the  contraction  of  spheres — the  gravi- 

.  „      tational  contraction  of  the  sun  being  itself 

Organic  Re- 

version  of  the  a  dcprcssion,  or  descent,  for  the  generation 
Inorganic.     ^^  ^j^^  j^^^^  ^^^  j.^j^^  ^^  ^j^^  planetary  system. 

But  in  organic  specialisation  we  see  the  division  as 
more  conspicuously  a  multiplication — an  increase.  The 
abundance  of  life  is  visibly  manifest. 

The  vast  amount  of  heat  generated  bv  the  contraction 


THE    DiyiDEO  LiyiNC  1 07 

of  the  sun  must  be  very  much  diminished  before  organic 
life  is  possible  upon  the  surface  of  the  earth.  But  in  the 
progression  of  organic  life  the  store  of  heat  is  continu- 
ally increased.  The  earliest  animals  are  cold-blooded. 
While  the  processes  of  the  inorganic  world  tend  toward 
an  appearance  of  rigid  uniformity  and  fi.xed  stability, 
those  of  the  organic  render  more  conspicuous  the  ap- 
pearance of  variation,  and  the  more  complex  the  organ- 
ism the  greater  becomes  its  instability  ;  and  in  many 
ways  the  procession  of  organisms  seems  to  reverse  that 
of  inorganic  matter,  though  in  reality  it  only  makes 
visible  to  us  tendencies  and  attributes  of  life  which  in 
the  macrocosmic  procession  are  hidden  from  us.  This 
visible  manifestion  begins,  indeed,  for  us  in  molecular 
organisation  as  shown  in  the  field  of  purely  chemical 
action.  Thus  the  mineral,  water,  in  its  various  states, 
solid,  liquid,  and  gaseous,  more  than  adumbrates  the 
suggestions  received  by  us  from  physiological  action. 


\.\\  II 

The  distinction  wc  have  noted  seems  to  be  rather 
between  the  molecular  and  the  molar  tiian  between 
tlie  organic  and  inorganic  synthesis  ;  and  this  distinc- 
tion would  doubtless  disappear  through  a  more  inti- 
mate acquaintance  with  the  molar  universe.  The 
atoms  of  a  molecule  imitate  the  motions  of  ^,.     .   ,  ^ . 

Chemical  Ad- 

the  solar  system — having  attraction  and  re-   umbmiion  oi 
pulsion   and   troi)ic   movement,  dissociation 
and    reassociation    of    the    dissociated    atoms.      The 
study    of    solutions,   combined   with    thu    of    thermo 


io8  A  STUDY   OF  DEATH 

dj'namics,  and  later  with  that  of  electro-dynamics,  has 
thrown  much  light  upon  the  vexed  problem  of  the  con- 
stitution of  matter.  But  even  the  simplest  observa- 
tions regarding  so  common  a  substance  as  water 
comprise  phenomena  that  look  back  to  primordial 
embodiments  of  mist  and  flame,  and  forward  to  the 
flame  of  life  incarnate.  In  its  gaseous  form,  water  is 
absorbent  of  heat,  which  at  the  same  time  expands 
and  lifts  it,  and  yet  with  this  expansion  there  is  a  ten- 
sion, as  within  the  limits  or  bounds  of  its  capacity,  a 
confinement  by  invisible  walls.  Or,  to  express  the  phe- 
nomenon in  another  way,  the  heat  expanding  the  air 
makes  it  an  absorbent  of  water,  so  that  the  flame  has 
an  embodiment  of  vapour,  both  the  embodiment  and 
its  confines  becoming  invisible ;  and  this  expansion 
goes  on  until  the  tension  reaches  its  limit  of  capacity, 
when  at  a  critical  moment  there  is  the  explosion  and 
precipitation — the  descendent  ministration.  We  have 
here  a  prophecy  of  the  latency  and  storage  of  energy 
in  physiological  capacity,  as  when  the  flaming  desire 
shapes  the  mouth  of  an  animal,  expanding  it  inwardly 
into  a  stomacli  as  a  receptacle  for  food,  and  into  the 
lungs  as  a  receptacle  for  air.  As  these  organic  ca- 
pacities are  deepened  inwardly,  representing  in  their 
sphering  and  involution  and  convolution  the  syn- 
thetic action  of  cosmic  envelopment  from  the  begin- 
ning, the  desire  which  has  thus  shaped  itself  by  intus- 
susception, expressing  its  postulation,  is  outwardly  a 
flame  of  increase,  ascending  also  while  it  is  crescent 
until  it  reaches  the  culminant  point  of  its  physiologi- 
cal term,  where  it  quickens  and  flowers  and  falls. 
Water,  when  by  the   dissipation  of  its  latent  heat  it 


THE  DiyiDFD  Llt^lNG  109 

reaches  a  certain  critical  point,  suddenly  quickens,  and, 
instead  of  contractinjj;,  expands  into  its  Horcsccnce  of 
crystallisation,  here  a<^ain  foreshadowing  that  epoch  of 
organic  development  which  determines  generational 
succession,  where  the  Hame  of  increase  becomes  for 
it  own  organism  a  consuming  tlame  of  sacrifice,  falling 
to  rise  again  in  another  but  consubstantial  incarnation. 
We  shall  consider  this  point  more  at  length  when  we 
come  to  treat  in  greater  particularity  the  ascent  and 
descent  of  life.  We  wish  here  only  to  draw  attention 
to  the  fact  that  while  increase  is  so  conspicuous  in 
organic  existence,  de.ith  is  equally  conspicuous,  and 
is  thus  emphasised  at  the  very  point  where  nutrition 
is  arrested  and  transformed  into  a  genetic  process. 

Death,  which  invisibly  is  Love — the  attraction  of  grav- 
itation in  the  spiritual  as  in  the  physical  world,  bind- 
ing all  spirits  to  the  Father  of  Spirits,  as  all  planets  to 
their  suns,  and  bringing  all  prodigals  home  — is  also  born 
of  Love,  when  it  visibly  and  conspicuously  appears  as 
a  specialisation,  in  connection  with  the  procession  of 
generations  in  the  organic  kingdom. 


XXVIll 

Resuming  the  suggestions  derived  from  a  study  of 
organic  specialisation,  we  find  that  they  contradict  cer- 
tain propositions  which  are  accepted  as  axiomatic 
truths  in  the  realm  of  phvsical  science  ;  or,  . 

•^     -        _  _  _  In»tAl)iIiiv  ol 

rather,  they  introduce  opposite  propositions    sticnnhc 
essential  to  a  full  comprehension   of    Nat- 
ure, of  which  science  professes  to  give  but  one  side. 


iro  A  STUDY  Oh  DEATH 

I.  Science,  dealing  only  with  structure  antl  function, 
lays  stress  upon  evolution.  A  philosophic  view  of  Life 
as  transcending  structure,  as  creative,  brings  into  prom- 
inence the  opposite  truth  of  Involution.  In  a  single 
passage  of  his  Synthetic  Philosophy.  Herbert  Spen- 
cer admits  that  this  philosophy  woultl  be  more  truly 
indicated  by  the  term  Involution;*  but  generally  his 
consideration  of  nature  ignores  not  only  creation  but 
Life  itself,  and  is  confined  to  sequences  so  stated  as  to 
imply  the  evolution  of  every  new  form  of  existence 
from  its  antecedent.  In  reality,  the  term  evolution  is 
properly  applicable  only  to  the  processes  of  expendi- 
ture, ignoring  the  original  tension.  It  is  as  if  we  were 
to  consider  a  watch  wholly  with  reference  to  its  func- 
tion as  a  time  keeper  —  an  office  which  it  performs 
through  the  relaxation  of  the  tension  of  its  spring — 
giving  no  adequate  consideration  to  the  tension  itself, 
because  our  attention  is  fixed  upon  the  action  of  the 
escapement  as  more  immediately  associated  with  the 
use  or  function  of  the  machine.  The  scientific  man 
does  not  ignore  latent  potency,  about  which,  indeed, 
he  has  much  to  say.  He  will  show  us  that  the  poten- 
tial energy  of  the  sun  is  greatest  when  its  distance  from 
the  earth  is  greatest,  and  when,  therefore,  the  kinetic, 
or  patent,  energy  between  the  earth  and  the  sun  is 
least ;  but  it  is  energy  as  kinetic,  as  manifest  motion, 
that  comes  within  the  scope  of  his  measurement,  and 
whose  laws  he  can  formulate  ;  the  potential  energy,  on 
the  other  hand,  he  does  not  ignore,  but  simply  assumes 
as  the  A',  or  unknown  and  indeterminable  element  in 

*  First  Principles,  p.  26S. 


THE  DIVIDED  LIVING  iii 

his  computation,  treating  it  as  wholly  divorced  from 
creative  life,  since  his  proper  business  is  with  motion, 
not  with  creation. 

II.  The  axiom  that  motion  is  always  in  the  lines  of 
least  resistance,  while  it  is  true  of  motion  as  function- 
ing, is  not  true  of  the  lifting  power  of  life  which  gives 
tension.  Of  motion  before  it  moves,  if  we  may  be  al- 
lowed the  use  of  such  an  expression,  the  opposite  prop- 
osition is  true — namely,  that  it  seeks  difficulty.  Life 
as  creative,  as  genetic,  as  in  its  specialisation  a  series 
of  transformations,  withdraws  from  the  facility  of  habit, 
of  a  descending  motion,  for  new  involution.  jNIore- 
over,  this  tendency  of  life  toward  difficulty  rather  than 
toward  facility  is  illustrated  in  the  continuation  of  the 
same  species  through  the  procession  of  new  genera- 
tions. 

III.  Modern  scientific  views,  as  generally  accepted, 
lay  undue  stress  upon  the  struggle  for  existence  as  a 
competition  between  species  and  between  individuals 
of  the  same  species.  The  result  of  this  conflict  is  ex- 
pressed in  the  familiar  phrase,  "  The  survival  of  the 
fittest."  Since  structure  itself  is  for  stability  and  con- 
servation, within  the  limitations  imposed  by  life  itself 
(t.  c,  by  the  special  form  of  life),  it  is  true  that,  other 
things  being  equal,  the  structure  which  is  best  adapted 
to  its  environment  will  have  the  greatest  stability.  There 
is  travail  in  all  forms  of  life,  the  struggle  for  a  foothold, 
the  competition  for  vantage-ground.  As  has  been  al- 
ready remarked,  life  seeks  difficulty,  and  the  progress 
of  specialisation  involves  at  every  stage  of  increasing 
complexity  greater  difficulty  and  more  frequent  and 
varied  risk.     An  exceptionally  fortunate  environment 


112  .-/  ST  any  oh  dhath 

leads  more  often  to  degeneration  than  to  tlic  pronu> 
tion  of  tltness.  The  suppleness  of  the  pursuer  is  not 
more  remarkable  than  that  which  is  developed  in  the 
game  pursued.  Taking  the  widest  range  of  observa- 
tion, we  do  not  tind  that  either  safety  or  ease  is  an  ul- 
timate objective  aim  in  Nature  ;  she  emphasises  dis- 
continuity rather  than  continuity,  revival  rather  than 
survival,  running  toward  death  in  her  progression, 
burning  all  bridges  behind  her  as  she  advances.  In  the 
largest  view,  stability  is  an  illusion,  uniformity  a  dis- 
guise, the  persistence  of  type  not  an  eternal  concern. 
Life,  comprehending  all  involvements  and  the  solici- 
tudes pertaining  to  these,  has  itself  no  solicitude,  and, 
because  it  is  esentially  resurrection,  it  glorifies  death. 
The  term  survival  is  merely  relative,  and  the  conflict 
for  survival  is  a  part  of  the  universal  harmony  which, 
in  the  partial  vision,  it  seems  to  contradict.  When  we 
consider  that  organic  existence  is  possible  only  because 
of  a  descending  ministration  from  the  beginning  of  a 
cosmic  order,  and  that  it  is  sustained  only  through  the 
continuance  of  this  ministration  still  further  expanded 
in  the  relations  between  the  various  species  of  organ- 
isms, and  in  the  succession  of  generations,  we  compre- 
hend that  sacrifice  is  as  conspicuous  in  the  natural 
world  as  is  demand,  that  there  is  no  cycle  of  existence 
in  which  altruism  is  not  as  fully  illustrated  as  individu- 
ation, interdependence  as  independence — this  illustra- 
tion becoming  more  luminous  with  the  progression  of 
organic  life. 

Science    in    its  specialisation  deals  with  matter  as 
habit-taking.     As  morphology  it  considers  the  habit  as 


THE   DIl^IDED   LIVING  113 

one  of  structural  formation.  Considering  the  habit  as 
one  of  functional  activity,  it  formulates  the  laws  of  this 
activity  which  in  the  organic  world  are  called  the  laws 
of  physiology.  In  either  case  the  habit  is  an  investi- 
ture, and  as  an  outward  visible  manifestation  hides  the 
principle  of  its  own  Becoming.  The  creative  life  thus 
veiled  must  forever  remain  a  mystery.  Looking  toward 
the  beginnings,  seeing  in  every  moment  a  renascence, 
we  find  the  veiling  a  revealing.  There  is  even  thus  an 
illusion,  but  the  veil  is  at  least  transparent.  But  in  the 
study  of  an  order  we  regard  mainly  the  meanings  of  ex- 
istence with  reference  to  outward  ends ;  we  follow  the 
stream  away  from  its  fountain  ;  we  are  lost  in  these  di- 
vergent paths,  and  what  we  see  of  life  appears  to  con- 
tradict the  essential  quality  of  life.  Science  in  its  very 
modesty,  in  the  recognition  of  its  limitations,  tends  to 
agnosticism.  What  at  first  was  inevitably  an  illusion 
becomes  a  delusion.  The  transcendency  of  life  is  not 
apparent  in  the  confinement  of  closed  circuits,  and  its 
veil  is  no  longer  a  transparency,  but  an  obscuration. 
What  began  in  modesty  may  thus  end  in  inflexible  cer- 
titudes. 

The  habit  of  life  has  been  truly  and  patiently  fol- 
lowed into  its  most  intricate  folds,  but  the  scientific 
prodigal  has  gone  into  the  far  country  with  his  particu- 
lar share  of  the  Father's  divided  living ;  and  to  him, 
with  his  face  turned  that  way,  the  order  of  things  which 
is  the  subject  of  his  close  scrutiny  is  seen  true,  but  in 
those  aspects  which  contradict  its  essential  truth.  The 
propositions  which  he  makes  concerning  this  order  of 
things,  such  propositions  as  those  we  have  been  con- 
sidering, are  verified  by  all  the  facts  within  liis  range 

8 


114  A   STUDY   OF  DEATH 

of  observation.  He  does  not  belie  the  order,  but  he 
fails  to  see  that  every  order,  in  its  visible  aspects,  is  in 
planetary  contradiction  to  its  central  sun.  It  is  not  in- 
deed necessary  that  he  should  fail  of  this  recognition  , 
he  has  only  to  transcend  the  limitations  of  the  partial 
view,  by  which  his  consideration  is  confined  to  a  study 
of  structure  and  function  wholly  with  reference  to  en- 
vironment, to  see  that  the  truths  of  this  relation  are  the 
disguises  rather  than  the  interpretations  of  life.  Mor- 
phology then  becomes  the  science  of  creative  trans- 
formations, wherein,  as  also  in  all  functioning,  it  is  not 
the  environment  which  determines  life,  but  life  which 
makes  its  demand  upon  the  environment.  The  old 
propositions  will  be  maintained — expressing  the  visible 
habit  of  inorganic  and  organic  existence  in  terms  the 
most  convenient  and  exact  for  the  purposes  of  science 
— but  they  will  yield  to  their  opposites,  confessing  the 
truth  of  which  they  in  their  rigid  outlines  are  denials , 
having  indeed  that  reaction  which  belongs  to  life  itself, 
whereby  all  apparently  fixed  and  inflexible  certitudes 
and  stable  embodiments  dissolve  into  the  unseen  and 
indefinable  mystery  from  which  they  sprang.  All  mat- 
ter, in  all  its  forms,  has  this  solvency  and  release. 


XXIX 

The  cosmic  desire  and  expectation  from  the  begin- 
ning reaches  forward  to  incarnation.      This  in  itself 
is  an  intimation  of  some  special  glory  con- 

Incarnation.  i     •         i         n       i  i        i  i 

summated  in  the  flesh — the  last  and  most 
exquisite  product  of  terrestrial  culture.     Whatever  of 


THE  DIVIDED   LINING  115 

descent  there  may  seem  to  have  been  from  the  ethereal 
estate  of  nebulous  flame  to  that  of  the  mute  insensate 
crust  of  the  earth,  we  cannot  but  regard  the  progres- 
sion of  cell-Hfe  as  an  ascension,  as  if  from  the  cinders 
of  extinguished  fires  some  new  flame  had  arisen  more 
nearly  imaging  the  flame  of  the  Spirit,  since  it  had 
breath,  and  in  many  ways  witnessing  that  Spirit  as  no 
star  could  do,  nor  the  mightiest  motion  of  the  wind  or 
sea.  This  flame,  which  breathes  in  the  vegetable  as  one 
breathes  in  sleep,  and  which  even  there  is  aspirant,  many- 
colored  and  fragrant,  and  a  flame  of  increase,  in  the  ani- 
mal awakes,  and  besides  exhibiting  a  greater  variety  of 
color  and  more  wonderful  fertility  than  in  plant-life,  has 
will  and  sensibility.  In  animate  life  what  marvellous 
ascension — from  the  worm  to  the  insect,  from  the  creep- 
ing reptile  to  the  hot-blooded  bird  which  encloses, 
possesses,  and  commands  the  element  upon  which  it 
depends,  more  buoyant  than  that  which  supports  it, 
seeming  to  be  an  embodiment  at  once  of  flame  and  air, 
expressing  heaven  and  echoing  the  heaven-song  !  The 
animal  seems  to  have  won  a  kind  of  independence  of 
the  earth,  a  show  of  separateness  emphasised  by  its 
power  of  voluntary  motion.  Its  complex  organism  is  a 
deeper  involvement  than  is  apparent  in  less  advanced 
forms,  and  yet  it  seems  to  be  the  most  perfect  visible 
revelation  of  the  essential  quality  of  life,  as  if  in  its 
breathing  and  pulsation,  in  its  spontaneity  of  motion 
and  feeling,  and  in  its  expansion  and  inhibition,  it  were 
the  living  representation  of  that  primordial  manifesta- 
tion which  science  strives  to  apprehend  in  its  study  of 
the  original  constitution  of  matter.  Since  it  is  the  visi- 
ble realisation  of  the  cosmic  desire,  therefore  desire  as 


ir6  /I  STUDY  OF  DEATH 

manifested  in  its  activities  and  impulses  naturally 
seems  to  us  the  very  image  of  the  divine  yearning  in 
creation  from  the  beginning.  So,  regarding  the  most 
perfect  fleshly  embodiment,  we  speak  of  it  as  "  the 
human  form  divine  "  ;  having  reached  the  finest  net- 
work of  imprisonment,  we  seem  at  the  same  time  to 
have  reached  a  critical  moment  of  emancipation,  as  if 
in  man — the  extreme  complication  of  finitude  and  the 
most  fallible  of  all  creatures,  considered  simply  as  an 
animal  and  without  regard  to  his  peculiar  psychical  de- 
velopment—  life  for  the  first  time  assumed  an  erect 
position  and  a  divine  gait.  Thus  always  men  have 
imagined  the  divine  after  the  human  pattern  ;  it  is  an 
inevitable  idealism,  and  if  it  be  the  greatest  of  illusions, 
it  is  one  luminous  with  all  the  light  there  is  for  us  in 
the  present  order  of  things. 

Nevertheless  it  is  not  an  illusion  in  which  the  human 
spirit  finds  rest;  and  though  we  can  imagine  no  more 
glorious  forms  for  heavenly  inhabitants,  and  St.  John 
in  his  Apocalypse  admitted  even  the  lower  animals  as 
participants  in  the  celestial  ritual,  yet  is  there  the  feel- 
ing of  spiritual  revulsion  from  the  flesh  as  from  the 
world  itself,  so  strongly  expressed  by  St.  Paul  in  his 
use  of  the  term  carnal  and  in  his  assertion  that "  flesh 
and  blood  cannot  inherit  the  kingdom  of  heaven." 
The  finest  cosmic  texture  which  we  know — the  most 
beautiful  garment  we  see  God  by  that  issues  from  the 
loom  of  time  — is  turned  from  as  if  it  were  also  the 
grossest.  In  it  is  stored  all  the  sweetness  of  earthly 
existence,  a  warmth  and  influence  more  magical  than 
is  intimated  in  the  forces  disclosed  in  the  chemist's 
laboratory ;  yet  is  it  a  glory  that  must  pass,  and  in  no 


THE  DIVIDED  LIVING  117 

dissolution  is  tliere  corruption  more  repellent,  not  even 
in  the  miasma  of  vegetable  decomposition.  But  it  is 
repented  of  before  its  divestiture  in  that  new  involu- 
tion of  life  —  that  psychical  synthesis  which  is  dis- 
tinctive of   human   destiny. 


XXX 

Following  the  line  of  thought  thus  far  taken,  we  may 
not  regard  the  human  species  as  evolved  from  any 
other  ;  and  it  is  conceded  by  some  of  the  most  eminent 
evolutionists  that  there  is  not  the  slightest  evidence  of 
such  a  derivation  nor  any  ground  for  its  hypothetical 
postulation. 

Life  has  no  beginning  or  end,  save  as  it  is  always 
beginning  and  always  ending.  Man,  before  his  ap- 
pearance as  a  distinct  species  in  the  specialisation  of 
cell  life,  was  not  excluded  from  the  series  of  trans- 
formations looking  forward  to  his  incarna-  pigjin^,,;^^ 
tion.    In  all  specialisations  he  was  a  distinct   Human  Spe- 

.       ,  .       ,      .  ...  cialisation. 

species,  his  royal  line  of  kmship  bemg,  like 
that  of  Melchisedec,  without  beginning  or  end  of 
days.  That  which  he  is  now,  in  comparative  physi- 
ology, is  typical  of  his  relative  position  from  the  be- 
ginning in  all  cosmic  manifestation — a  position  which 
we  can  no  more  represent  to  ourselves  in  any  definite 
conception  than  we  can  forecast  what  it  will  be  in  any 
future  existence. 

INIan  was  not  first  an  animal  and  afterward  man. 
In  the  earliest  stages  of  his  development  his  animality 
suffered  a  kind  of  indignity  from  the  psychical  charac- 


ii8  A  STUDY  OF  DEATH 

teristics  which  ultimately  were  to  give  him  supremacy, 
so  that  among  animals  he  was  at  a  disadvantage,  lack- 
ing somewhat  of  that  infallible  knowledge  which  be- 
longed to  their  instinct,  and  appearing  less  competent 
physically  than  many  other  species  for  the  conflict 
with  external  conditions.  A  rational  intelligence,  such 
as  distinguishes  the  man  of  to-day,  transferred  to  that 
period,  would  have  regarded  the  human  species  as 
ignominiously  defective,  and  at  a  fatal  disadvantage 
even  as  compared  with  the  apes,  from  some  variety  of 
which  he  is  thought  to  have  descended ;  every  con- 
spicuous difference  from  these,  including  his  want  of  a 
tail,  would  have  seemed  to  emphasise  his  inferiority. 
To  such  an  intelligence  the  law  of  the  survival  of  the 
fittest  would  have  seemed  to  put  the  human  weakling 
hors  de  cotnbat.  Thus  impossible  is  it  logically  to  an- 
ticipate the  creative  transformations  of  life! 

In  the  case  presented,  the  transformation  had  al- 
ready been  effected,  though  its  glorious  issues  were 
hidden  beneath  the  masque  of  apparently  hopeless 
weakness  and  ineptitude. 

The  human  infant  in  gestation  is  seen  to  resemble, 
at  various  stages,  animals  of  inferior  species,  as  if 
recapitulating  its  own  association  with  the  progressive 
specialisation  of  animal  life  from  the  protozoan  upward  ; 
but  as  we  know  that  the  infant  is,  at  every  one  of 
these  stages,  human,  proceeding  toward  a  distinctive 
destiny  heralded  for  it  from  its  germination,  so  it  is 
not  unreasonable  to  presume  that  the  progression  thus 
represented  was  itself  charged  with  the  same  distinctive 
destiny.  INIan  as  a  protozoan  was  man,  distinguished 
from  all  other  protozoans,  having  that  likeness  to  them 


THE  DIVIDED   LIl/ING  119 

which  the  human  germ  has  to  the  germs  of  all  other 
animals,  one  of  appearance  only. 

We  have  been  considering  the  illusions  arising  from 
specialisation,  from  the  progressive  involution  of  life, 
and  increasing  with  the  complexity  of  organisation  ;  but 
the  ever  more  and  more  manifold  veiling  of  life,  cer- 
tainly in  the  organic  kingdom,  is  for  us  a  progressive 
revelation,  while  the  visible  appearance  of  the  simplest 
forms  of  existence  is  of  all  appearances  the  most  de- 
lusive, a  blind  masque,  insinuating  identity  and  sterile 
unity,  and  confounding  all  diverse  destinies. 


XXXI 

Humanity  is  in  its  specialisation  inseparable  from 
the  specialisation  of  Will  and  Reason.  We  here  touch 
the  pivotal  point  of  a  new  world.  All  divergent  rays 
are  here  concentrated  and  reflected  ;  and  it  is  thus 
that  the  human    incarnation   becomes    the 

r  r~,      ^        T^  ,        ,  .     ,  The  Fall. 

express  image  of  God.  from  the  long  night 
of  time  emerges  the  Logos  become  flesh,  whose  de- 
sire for  incarnation  has  dominated  the  cosmic  pro- 
cession, making  the  universe  the  complement  of  him- 
self. All  other  embodiment  was  the  adumbration  and 
expectation  of  his  appearance.  How  long  he  was 
withheld  as  the  special  nursling  of  Elohim,  or  with 
what  fiery  baptism  he  was  tempered  in  that  brooding 
infancy  which  we  call  Eden,  we  know  not.  We  know 
him  only  from  the  moment  of  his  flight  from  Paradise, 
when  began  for  him  the  cycle  of  wandering  which  had 
been  foretokened  in  the  movement  of  all  worlds.     Per- 


I20  A  STUDY  OF  DEATH 

chance,  if  he  might  have  turned  and  fallen  upon  the 
flaming  sword,  there  might  have  remained  for  him  for- 
ever the  level  world  of  innocence  and  simplicity  ;  but 
as  easily  might  the  Earth  have  repudiated  her  planetary 
destiny  and  have  fallen  into  the  sun. 

That  which  we  call  the  fall  of  man  was  in  all  primi- 
tive legends  represented  as  his  levitation  rather,  or  aspi- 
ration, his  entrance  upon  his  proper  destiny,  and  was 
associated  directly  with  the  development  of  his  rational 
or  discursive  intelligence.  He  partook  of  the  fruit  of 
the  tree  of  knowledge  —  that  knowledge  which  dis- 
tinguishes between  good  and  evil.  The  story  is  one 
that  shifts  its  shape  and  incidents  and  meaning  accord- 
ing to  the  human  mood.  In  the  Promethean  legend  it 
is  not  the  fall  but  the  betterment  of  man  that  is  inti- 
mated. The  Titan  (belonging  to  the  Earth  dynasty, 
which  is  in  alliance  with  the  human  race  against  the 
jealous  Olympian  gods)  steals  fire  from  the  hostile 
heaven  for  the  benefit  of  man,  who  is  thus  enabled  to 
start  upon  his  career  of  progress.  In  the  Hebrew 
legend  there  is  a  hint  of  Titanic  help  in  the  advice  of 
the  serpent  and  a  suggestion  of  jealous  alarm  on  the 
part  of  the  Elohim  who  send  in  haste  the  cherubim  to 
guard  the  tree  of  Life.  The  first  use  of  clothing  is  also 
indicated,  as  the  beginning  of  man's  larger  investiture. 
But  the  time  when  the  legend  took  its  final  shape  was 
evidently  one  of  reaction  against  the  artificial  condi- 
tions of  civilised  life — one  of  weariness  and  dissatisfac- 
tion with  "  all  the  labor  of  man  under  the  sun.''  At 
such  a  time  man  would  seem  to  have  lost  some  higher 
estate  through  vain  curiosity  and  overweening  pride, 
and  to  have  eaten  fruit,  for  his  own  sake  wisely  forbid- 


THE   DIl^lDED   LINING  121 

den,  v/hen  he  surrendered  instinct  for  errant  and  falli- 
ble reason  and  safe  simplicity  for  the  innumerable  perils 
of  a  haughty  venture. 

XXXII 

But  it  was  his  destiny,  and  the  very  essence  of  it 
was  its  psychical  character.  To  all  other  animals 
choice  could  have  no  rational  meaning,  since  in  their 
selection  the  alternative  is  instinctively  re-    .  ^. 

•'  A  Singular 

jected.  All  animal  consciousness  is  doubt-  Psychical 
less  in  kind  the  same  as  the  human,  and  ^^ '"y- 
there  is  in  it  an  adumbration  of  reason,  having,  how- 
ever, no  properly  rational  field  or  career,  as  in  the 
case  of  man.  But  man,  as  at  the  same  time  mastering 
all  other  animality,  and  repenting  himself  of  his  own, 
has  a  psychical  nature  wholly  unique.  The  lion,  his 
embodiment  having  been  perfected,  has  no  iield  of  oper- 
ation outside  of  his  bodily  functions.  The  corporeal 
perfection  of  a  man,  on  the  other  hand,  is  an  utter 
blank,  from  which  no  positive  suggestion  can  be  de- 
rived as  to  his  peculiar  terrestrial  destiny;  as  blank  as 
was  the  Earth  in  her  merely  structural  perfection  as  to 
any  suggestion  of  the  flora  and  fauna  of  which  she  was 
to  become  mother  and  nurse. 

One  of  the  most  interesting  studies  in  natural  science 
is  the  consideration  of  the  transformation  which  vege- 
table and  animal  life  have  wrought  in  the  earth  :  as  in 
the  restoration  by  bacteria  to  the  soil  of  elements 
drawn  from  it  and  converted  into  animal  tissue;  in  the 
culture  of  the  soil  by  earth-worms  ;  in  the  erosion  of 
stones  by  lichens  ;  in  the  storage  of  sunbeams  by  vege- 


122  A  STUDY   OF  DEATH 

tables  in  coal  deposits  ;  and  in  the  building  up  of  con- 
tinents by  lowly  creatures  living  in  shells,  whose  work 
is  completed  by  coral  germs.*  But  the  terrestrial  trans- 
formation wrought  by  man  is  much  more  remarkable, 
because  it  is  effected  through  an  arbitrary  selection 
and  adjustment,  which,  though  in  some  ways  fortu- 
nately inapplicable,  is,  in  others,  almost  limitless.  He 
cannot  rival  the  earth-worm's  ploughing,  but  he  can 
make  a  garden  of  the  desert,  and  reduce  to  temperate 
order  the  riotous  wilderness.  More  rapidly  than  the 
lichens  he  reduces  the  rocks  to  dust.  His  destruction 
of  certain  species  of  animals  and  his  domestication 
and  improvement  of  others ;  his  artificial  modification 
of  plants  and  fruits ;  and  his  diversion  of  water- 
courses, have  changed  the  outward  appearance  of  the 
globe.  His  temples  and  pyramids,  his  cities  and  towns 
and  hamlets  upon  the  land  and  his  fleets  upon  the  sea 
have  humanised  every  landscape ;  and  even  the  mis- 
chief resulting  from  his  wasteful  destruction  of  forests 
and  the  blotches  he  has  made  upon  the  bright  face  of 
Nature  are  evidences  of  his  masterful  power  to  impress 
his  mark  upon  the  world.  These  are  but  the  visible 
signs  of  his  psychical  supremacy — such  as  would  be 
disclosed  to  the  casual  regard,  and  do  not  begin  to  tell 
the  story  of  this  new  universe  of  man  and  mind.  A 
visitor  from  some  other  planet  who  had  no  experience 
of  a  similar  development  would  find  in  these  obvious 
phenomena  no  adequate  indication  of  their  own  mean- 
ing; and  a  close  scrutiny  of  details,  disclosing  temples, 

*  See  The  Study  of  Animal  Life,  by  J.  Arthur  Thompson,  pp. 
21-26. 


THE  Dlt^IDED  LINING  123 

the  edifices  for  varied  social  uses,  tlie  industrial  ma- 
chinery, the  libraries  and  art  galleries,  the  equipment  of 
museums  and  scientific  laboratories,  the  insignia  of  po- 
litical and  military  functions,  the  properties  of  diverse 
amusements,  and  the  paraphernalia  of  domestic  econ- 
omies, would  bring  into  the  view  of  such  a  stranger  a 
system  of  symbols  requiring  the  most  elaborate  in- 
struction for  their  comprehension,  which  would  be  the 
revelation  not  only  of  what  man  has  done  for  the  earth, 
but  also  of  the  uses  he  has  made  of  matter  and  force 
for  purely  human  ends.  A  still  closer  study,  even  if  it 
were  confined  to  the  single  department  of  literature, 
would  lay  open  the  vista  of  human  history  and  reveal 
the  marvellous  imaginations  and  speculations  of  indi- 
vidual poets  and  philosophers,  showing  man  as  the 
thinker  and  interpreter  as  well  as  the  doer.  In  this 
view  the  human,  or  what  is  the  same  thing,  the  psychi- 
cal, destiny  transcends  all  earthly  contacts  and  material 
uses  rising  to  the  concerns  of  an  invisible  world,  to  so- 
licitudes and  aspirations  which  overleap  the  physical 
limitations  of  existence. 

Like  a  celestial  firmament  above  the  earthly  is  this 
new  realm  of  Thought,  whose  tension  is  broken  in  the 
precipitate  of  speech — the  Word  from  the  beginning 
ultimately  expressed  in  the  articulate  word.  The  rhyth- 
mic harmony  of  the  animate,  the  incarnate,  ascends 
into  overtones  of  psychical  harmony.  Here  is  a  new 
involution,  a  fresh  embodiment — an  adumbration,  at 
least,  of  what  St.  Paul  calls  a  "spiritual  body."  The 
tension  here  is  a  mystical  unfathomable  storage  of  po- 
tential energy,  next  immediately  to  the  quick  deaths  of 
the  brain,  but  for  it  less  directly  all  the  world  dies ;  it 


124  ^  STUDY  OF  DEATH 

is  an  ascension  for  which  all  the  waves  of  cosmic  life 
forever  rise  and  fall. 

The  desire  which  has  shaped  and  informed  macro- 
cosm and  microcosm,  ever  sphering  itself  anew,  and 
entering  upon  new  tropes  in  its  action  and  reaction, 
passing  from  order  to  order,  each  wonderfully  diversi- 
fied and  co-ordinated,  becomes  now  the  ensphered 
rational  Will.  Every  successiv^e  stage  of  the  progres- 
sion up  to  this  point  had  involved  additional  suspense, 
more  complex  limitation,  increased  temperament,  until 
in  the  starved  deeps  of  ocean  and  upon  the  barren  crust 
of  earth  the  cell  appeared.  Extreme  limitation,  compen- 
sation, balanced  resistances,  gave  organic  life  its  op- 
portunity ;  and  in  the  development  of  this  life  that 
balance  became  more  conspicuous,  the  physiological 
functions  of  the  more  complex  organisms  having  a 
dualistic  or  divided  action,  as  in  respiration  and  circu- 
lation, and  the  interaction  between  the  vegetable  and 
animal  kingdom  maintaining  a  contrapuntal  harmony. 
It  was  ever  a  more  delicate  poise  of  equilibration 
until,  in  psychical  action,  it  became  a  deliberate  vo- 
lition in  the  subtle  temperament  of  consciousness. 
What  range  of  suspense  from  that  of  a  planet  like  Sat- 
urn, which  in  the  poet's  fancy 

"Sleeps  on  his  luminous  ring," 

to  that  of  the  spirit's  contemplation  !  Earth  has  her 
summer  when  she  is  at  her  greatest  distance  from  the 
sun,  latency  and  ascension  being  greatest  when  the 
patent  energy  is  least,  or  when  it  is  most  in  poise.  So 
man,  upon  creation's  outermost  rim,  has  his  psychical 


THE  DIVIDED   LIVING  ^25 

ascension,  his  will,  though  under   the   extremest  limi- 
tation, being  the  express  image  of  the  divine. 

In  the  contradiction  between  man  s  position,  as  the 
most  helpless  and  fallible  of  all  creatures,  and  his 
destiny  as  the  son  of  God,  we  confront  the  human 
comedy,  wherein  the  emphasis  of  time  has  its  intensest 
exaggeration,  and  the  eternal  familiarity  its  deepest 
me  an  in  2:. 


XXXITI 


In  the  human  world  the  outer  worldliness  is  re- 
peated and  outdone,  having  an  infinite  projection. 
The  multiplicity  and  variety  of  the  physical  universe 
sink  into  insignificance  beside  this  new  series  of  in- 
volvements and  complications.   "  The  Father 

,        v      •!  1  The  Con- 

worketh  hitherto,  and  now  man  works,  build-  scions  Veil- 
ing his  superstructure  above  the  divine  foun-  "';^;;;'^^^;'' 
dation.  Has  God  hidden  Himself  behind  the 
veils  of  His  world  ?  Man  has  multiplied  these  veils, 
whereby  he  has  also  hidden  from  himself  his  own  es- 
sential self.  He  comes  into  a  world  of  hidden  fires 
and  broken  lights,  a  world  of  interrupted  currents  and 
of  apparent  stabilities,  rigid  to  the  point  of  frangibility  ; 
and  this  broken  world  he  still  further  breaks  ;  his  mind 
is  a  prism,  and  what  to  his  vision  is  already  partial 
becomes  more  discrete  in  his  analysis,  and  most  artic- 
ulate in  his  speech. 

In  the  specialised  consciousness  nothing  begins 
save  by  interruption  or  termination.  Definition  is  by 
boundaries,  by  the  lines  of  cleavage  in  the  brokenness 
of  things  in  time  and  space,  so  that  judgment  is  dis- 


126  A  STUDY  OF  DEATH 

cernment.  We  would  have  no  definite  conception  of 
light  and  no  name  for  it  but  for  its  interruption,  or  of 
any  current  save  as  it  is  broken.  Whatever  elements 
there  may  be  in  the  universe,  about  us  or  within  us, 
that  are  not  thus  discurrent  cannot  enter  into  the  dis- 
course of  our  reason.  Dissociation  seems  primary, 
and  our  association  is  of  the  dissociated  elements,  co- 
ordination being  the  reflex  of  radiant  diversification. 
It  is  true  that  our  first  sensibility  seems  to  hold  all 
things  in  a  kind  of  confusion,  but  the  progress  of 
intelligent  perception  is  through  discrimination  and 
comparison. 

XXXIV 

The  psychical,  like  every  other  order,  is  planetary. 
Not  only  are  all  other  systems  therein  reflected  and 
recognized,  but  it  is  itself  a  distinctively  human  system 
of  thought  and  volition  throw'u  off  and  dissociated  from 
the  solar  man,  showing  in   the  earliest  period   of  its 

development  that  fluidity  and  instability 
tary  MaT    '^^^ich  characterises  the  primitive  planet,  and 

then  gradually  hiding  its  fires,  losing  its 
clairvoyant  transparency  in  opacity,  and  shaping  its 
firmaments.  We  have  at  last  the  superficial  planetary 
man,  seeming  to  himself  to  have  a  motion  wholly  his 
own  ;  and  this  illusion  is  fortified  by  the  fact  that  in 
his  sky  (which  thus  differs  from  all  other  planetary 
skies)  the  central  sun  is  never  seen.  There  is  no 
blindness,  no  opacity,  like  that  of  the  extremely  spe- 
cialised planetary  consciousness,  wherein  knowledge 
becomes  wholly  relative,  objective,  partial,  and  limited 


THE  Dlf/IDED  LINING  127 

to  the  visible  course  of  things — to  the  closed  circuits 
of  physical  and  mental  phenomena.  In  its  extreme 
rationalism  it  excludes  the  miracle  and  becomes  en- 
tangled in  the  meshes  of  its  own  web,  vainly  attempt- 
ing the  solution  of  problems  which  are  of  its  own 
making,  since  they  arise  only  within  the  network  of 
relation,  association,  and  causation,  whereby,  as  by  the 
links  of  an  endless  chain,  it  is  imprisoned.  The 
strangest  feature  of  this  illusion  is  that  the  confine- 
ment is  known  as  liberation  ;  and  such  it  truly  is — 
the  planetary  liberty  of  arbitrary  selection,  of  choice. 
Here,  too,  is  maintained  the  likeness  of  the  psychical 
to  the  physical  planetary  system,  in  that  the  order 
seems  to  deny  its  central  principle  :  instinct  is  hidden 
under  arbitrary  determination,  the  Son  becomes  the 
Pupil,  experimenting  on  his  own  account  and  learning 
only  by  failure ;  the  fountain  is  lost  in  the  stream,  and 
essential  attributes  are  disguised  in  the  outward  and 
structural  integrity. 

"  God  hath  so  set  the  world  in  the  heart  of  man," 
saith  the  Preacher,  "  that  man  knoweth  not  what  He 
hath  been  doing  from  the  beginning  even  unto  the 
end." 

XXXV 

Behold    how  the  illusions  thicken  and    multiply  in 
this  world  which  includes  the  phenomena  of  conscious 
will  and  intelligence.      Life,  in  these  outer 
courts  of  its  temple,  seems  to  deny  its  essen-    f^^sfo^s^ 
tial  attributes.    In  itself  spontaneous,  direct, 
immediate,  it  becomes  the  opposite  of  all  these  in  a 


128  A  STUDY   OF  DH/1TH 

secondary  nature,  where  action  and  knowledge  seem  ar- 
bitrary, where  they  are  relative,  through  means  toward 
ends,  all  operation  proceeding  by  indirection.  Con- 
sider the  contradiction  involved  in  the  necessity  of 
making  acquaintance  in  this  casual  and  indirect  way, 
as  in  a  game  of  hide-and-seek,  with  beings  we  have  al- 
ways known.  In  our  relations  to  other  existence,  what 
incongruity  :  that  we  should  depend  upon  it  for  suste- 
nance; that  we  should  enter  into  alliance  with  it  for 
our  protection  and  into  apparent  conflict  with  it  for 
very  standing  room !  Life  only  is  potent :  whence, 
then,  this  guise  of  helplessness,  this  stress  of  concern 
as  to  means  of  life,  as  to  provision  for  safety  against 
impending  perils.'  W'iiat  strange  mansion  is  this, 
against  whose  portals  beat  eagerly  for  entrance  all 
human  souls  ;  and  of  those  finding  entrance  how  ques- 
tionable their  tenure  !  From  the  open  sea  what  winds 
and  currents  drive  against  the  reefs  and  rocks  of  a 
coast  that  is  at  once  hospitable  and  forbidding,  invit- 
ing to  the  shelter  of  secure  havens,  drawing  also  to 
shallows  and  shipwreck,  the  merest  triviality  dividing 
safety  from  destruction  !  And  this  human  drift,  which 
is  the  latest,  with  what  reckless  violence  does  it  fling 
itself  against  the  indurations  of  time,  seeking  a  foothold, 
where  with  patient  endurance  it  fortifies  its  position, 
cheerfully  trying  conclusions  with  things  in  this  rude 
field  of  experimentation  and  adventure  ! 

The  greatest  of  all  illusions  dominating  the  mind  of 
man  in  the  world  of  appearances  is  that  of  his  outward 
selfhood,  eclipsing  his  inmost  and  essential  personality. 
It  is  a  selfhood  which  seems  to  him  a  complete  estate, 
which  he  calls  the  Ego.     He  ignores  the  will  and  in- 


THE  DIVIDED  LiyiNG  129 

telligence  which  have  fashioned  and  informed  his  mem- 
bers, becoming  at  last  sensibiUty  and  volition  incar- 
nate ;  he  ignores  these  as  if  they  were  not  properly  his 
own,  and  calls  his  only  the  mind  he  has  made,  and  the 
will  which  he  has  formed  and  which  he  calls  his  char- 
acter— just  as  he  calls  his  only  those  corporeal  motions 
which  arise  from  his  conscious  volition. 

What  we  thus  term  illusions  are  but  the  habits  where- 
with we  clothe  ourselves,  the  masques  and  varied  cos- 
tumes which  we  wear  in  the  Comedy — the  veils  of  the 
transformation-scene.  What  is  within  1  What  is  that 
Fire  which  never  flames  but  is  the  ground  of  all  flame  ? 
What  is  that  Light  which  is  unbroken  and  knows  no 
shadow  ?  What  is  that  which  itself  flows  not  but  is  in 
the  fountain  that  by  which  the  fountain  rises  and  falls  ? 
What  is  that  which  is  not  born  and  never  dies  but  is 
the  principle  of  nascence  and  destruction  ?  We  know 
not  so  as  to  name,  and  yet  it  is  really  all  we  know,  the 
ground  of  all  our  knowledge.  It  can  be  stalled  in  no 
predicament.  The  Pantheist,  Monist,  and  Dualist  utter 
their  names  and  definitions  in  the  face  of  the  Unutter- 
able. To  say  that  beneath  all  that  is  disclosed  in  our 
consciousness  is  the  One  Will  and  Intelligence — the 
indivisible  soul  of  the  Universe — is  an  assertion  de- 
rived from  our  conception  of  a  finite  individuality.  In 
the  very  essence  of  Life  is  that  which  gives  the  mean- 
ing to  our  terms  One  and  Many,  but  not  to  the  one 
apart  from  the  other.  Any  predication  which  is  not 
the  absolute  negation  of  all  predicament  brings  us  back 
into  the  outer  courts  of  the  temple  —  into  our  ever- 
changing  habit  and  habitation — into  the  pulsation  of 
embodiment.  We  are  clothed  upon  not  with  immor- 
9 


I30  A  STUDY  OF  DEATH 

tality  but  with  mortality ;  habit  itself,  whether  of  the 
flesh  or  of  the  spirit,  being,  like  memor}-.  the  resurgence 
of  a  falling  wave.  As  we  have  said  before,  our  old 
Nurse  from  the  beginning  is  both  Lethe  and  Levana. 

Man,  more  than  any  other  creature,  is  by  his  desire 
and  his  destiny  (which  are  one)  thrust  into  exile, 
thrown  upon  his  own  venture,  absorbed  in  his  volun- 
tary endeavor.  His  is  not  the  blind  preoccupation  of 
instinct,  but  a  wakeful,  solicitous  intention,  engaging 
every  faculty  of  his  complex  nature.  For  a  time  in  the 
infancy  of  the  race  he  leans  to  the  earth  in  a  natural 
piety  and  humilitj-,  worshipping  Demeter,  and  looking 
for  help  to  the  benignant  powers  of  darkness.  But 
how  quickly  his  old  nurse  shows  herself  as  Levana 
jather  than  Lethe !  From  the  first,  indeed,  the  urgency 
of  his  peculiar  destiny  is  apparent,  driving  him  into  the 
far-countr\-,  and  he  stands  face  to  face  with  his  limita- 
tions— peculiar  limitations  upon  which  only  human  life 
enters,  and  which  are  at  once  the  source  of  his  weak- 
ness and  his  strength.  By  his  ver}'  individuation  he 
is  lost,  and  seems  like  one  disinherited  and  at  odds 
with  a  rude,  alien,  and  resistant  world  that  tempts  and 
bewilders  him.  Reduced  to  a  state  of  pupilage  he 
must  strive  for  all  he  would  have  or  know,  only  those 
doors  opening  to  him  at  which  he  knocks.  From  his 
sensible  contacts  with  the  world  he  builds  up  mind  and 
experience,  faltering  into  his  intelligence.  His  walking 
is  a  series  of  falls,  and  he  stumbles  into  all  his  progres- 
sion. Ignorance  and  fallibility  seem  to  be  the  very 
ground  of  his  curiosity  and  aspiration.  Disturbance 
becomes  stimulation,  resistance  the  measure  of  his 
strength ;  that  which  is  in  the  way  becomes  the  way. 


THE  DIl/IDED  LINING  131 

These  are  the  very  conditions  of  that  destiny  which  be- 
gins in  revulsion  from  animal  instinct,  a  revolt  involv- 
ing shame  and  humiliation  and  defeat,  a  sense,  also,  of 
conflict  with  Nature  —  with  her  life  and  her  death — 
but  from  these  conditions  arise  the  glory  of  the  human 
world. 

The  solar  man — the  centre  of  this  planetary  psychi- 
cal system — though  hidden,  is  still  the  potential  energy 
vitalising  and  illuminating  the  specialised  individual 
will  and  reason  and  the  collective  social  order  which  is 
the  result  of  human  eltort  and  intelligence.  This  latent 
energy  shines  with  native  light  through  the  rude  dawn 
of  social  culture  ;  an  informing  divination  and  inspira- 
tion ;  the  initiation  of  mystical  rites,  with  choral  song 
and  dance  ;  the  spring  of  buoyant  adventure  and  hero- 
ism ;  the  tender  inward  grace  of  faltering  beginnings  ; 
the  plenitude  of  faith,  making  up  for  inexpertness  and 
lack  of  outward  vantage.  Pessimism  lies  at  the  end  of 
things,  waiting  upon  facilit}',  as  the  sense  of  vanit)^  at- 
tends accomplishment. 

As  blind  feeling,  hidden  beneath  the  specialisation 
of  sensibility  in  vision  and  hearing,  remains  the  living 
ground  of  the  beautiful  perspective  developed,  so  that 
native  divination  which  is  buried  beneath  the  construc- 
tions of  the  human  understanding  remains  the  living 
ground  of  the  vast  and  varied  rational  perspective,  be- 
ing indeed  the  invisible  and  latent  power  which  lifts 
man  into  a  realm  whose  interests  range  in  ever-widen- 
ing circles  from  the  hearth-stone  to  the  remotest  star. 
But  it  is  the  hiding  of  this  power  that  accentuates  the 
human  perspective  and  makes  possible  certain  peculiar 
conceits  in  the  human  consciousness  —  such  as  have 


132  A  STUDY   OF  DEATH 

been  already  instanced  as  illusions,  all  emphasising  the 
apparent  independence  of  that  outward  integrity  which 
is  built  up  by  the  individual  and  collective  will,  and 
which,  as  a  whole,  constitutes  what  we  call  the  moral 
order. 


CHAPTER    II 
THE   MORAL    ORDER 


The  term  moral  is  derived  from  the  Latin  word  inos^ 
meaning  custom,  and  ethical,  from  a  Greek  word  (e6>oc) 
having  a  similar  meaning.  Primarily  these  terms  sug- 
gest wont,  inclination  that  has  become  habit- 
ual, a  spontaneous  disposition.  This  sponta-  ^'°pos"fi°n^ 
neity  is  apparent  in  the  beginnings  of  a  social 
order  and  in  the  first  stages  of  aesthetic  development. 
Human  actions,  like  the  operations  of  Nature,  seem  to 
fall  into  order  of  themselves,  and  with  reference  to  some 
unseen  centre  of  harmony.  Choice,  instead  of  being  an 
arbitrary  action  of  the  will,  is  rather  a  dilection,  ac- 
cordant to  the  invisible  harmony,  a  natural  selection  in 
the  subjective  sense  of  the  term,  a  divine  motion  and 
passion,  having  also  natural  inhibition  or  restraint,  cor- 
responding to  the  modulation  and  temperament  of  the 
cosmic  order.  Nothing  in  the  human  world  is  vitalised 
save  by  the  divine  action  and  passion,  and  the  vitality 
is  not  an  endowment,  it  is  genetic.  In  this  view  the 
problem  concerning  Free-will  could  not  occur.  We  do 
not  question  whether  the  flower  turns  to  the  sun  or  the 
sun  turns  the  flower,  when  these  are  seen  not  as  two 
motions  but  as  parts  of  one. 


134  A  STUDY   OF  DEATH 


II 


In  the  complex  specialisation  of  the  moral  order  this 
spontaneity  is  more  and  more  hidden  and  apparently 
contradicted  in  the  prominence  given  to  arbi- 
^Sta'ndar"''  trary  selection.  In  the  Latin  word  7nos 
there  is  the  suggestion  of  measure  (from  the 
old  root  ma),  so  that  one  comes  to  say  of  his  habitual 
conduct  that  it  is  not  only  his  wont,  but  his  rule  ;  and 
in  the  social  evolution  the  individual  comes  under  a 
rule  not  his  own,  to  which  both  his  inclination  and  his 
reason  may  be  subjected.  The  tendency  is  to  substi- 
tute for  flexible  principle  the  inflexible  rule.  As  the  in- 
dividual artificer  works  with  plummet  and  level  and  rule 
and  according  to  some  rational  plan,  so  does  society 
collectively  seem  to  build  up  its  institutions  in  con- 
formity to  some  outward  standard  and  according  to 
reason.  Whatever  is  necessary  to  maintain  the  tone, 
health,  and  vigor  of  an  organisation  (a  family,  a  tribe,  a 
nation,  or  a  confederacy  of  nations)  pertains  to  its 
morale  and  determines  moral  obligations,  and  these  ob- 
ligations will  be  rigorous  as  against  whatever  tends  to 
disintegration.  Life  will  be  more  and  more  hidden  for 
the  gain  of  structural  strength,  until  in  the  most  com- 
plex of  civilisations  it  will  seem  to  be  buried  under  its 
mechanical  framework.  In  a  merely  superficial  view 
the  entire  moral  order  seems  to  depend  upon  arbitrary 
selection,  to  be  the  result  of  experimentation,  the  sum 
of  which  we  call  experience.  If  we  were  confined  to 
this  view,  absolute  pessimism  would  be  the  only  goal 
of  our  philosophy.    Considering  the  moral  order  merely 


THE  MORAL   ORDER  135 

for  what  it  outwardly  seems  to  be,  as  summed  up  in 
man's  accomplishment  and  what  he  aims  to  accomplish, 
our  vision  of  the  human  prodigal  would  end  in  utter 
nakedness  and  inanition,  just  as  any  theory  of  the  cos- 
mic order  confined  to  the  study  of  structure  and  func- 
tion would  lead  us  finally  to  the  view  of  an  intensely 
cold  and  sterile  space  filled  with  dead  worlds. 


Ill 

Seen  only  as  shut  into  the  field  of  his  exile — of  his 
conscious  plans  and  efforts — the  weakness  of  man  is 
conspicuous,  and  his  shame  and  misery  in- 
tolerable ;   no  joys  within  these  limitations     Aspects  of 
can  balance  his  pains :  the  last  word  of  all    Human  Ex- 

^  _  perience. 

his  speech  must  be  Vanity !  Elsewhere  in 
the  boundless  universe  there  is  no  such  sense  of  humil- 
iation, as  elsewhere  there  is  no  such  capacity  for  vacilla- 
tion, misadventure,  and  defeat.  All  other  cosmic  opera- 
tion has  its  prodigality  of  a  divided  living,  its  error  and 
defect,  its  vagrancy  and  avoidance  of  perfection,  its 
swerving  from  straight  lines  and  from  regularity  of 
form,  but  its  procedure,  however  mediate,  is  sure,  with- 
out indirection,  never  mistaking  its  course  ;  and  this  is 
true  also  of  human  corporeal  and  psychical  action  not 
under  the  control  of  conscious  volition.  Life  outside 
of  the  field  of  arbitrary  choice  knows  no  outward  rule 
or  standard  ;  its  order  is  of  sure  ordinance,  a  spon- 
taneous co-ordination,  involving  no  experiments,  no 
misfits,  and  never  missing  the  happiness  of  harmonious 
adaptation — constituting  a  world  of  everlasting  loyalty 


136  A  STUDY  OF  DEATH 

and  fidelity  to  the  brooding  Spirit,  which  is  at  every 
point  unfalteringly  wise  and  potent.  Here  there  is, 
properly  speaking,  no  experience,  no  cumulative  knowl- 
edge. There  is,  indeed,  variability  of  habit,  discontinu- 
ity, transformation — a  series  of  surprises  delighting  even 
an  all  -  wise  expectation  ;  but,  whatever  the  habit  or 
change  of  habit,  there  is  thereby  no  formation  of  a  di- 
vine character  or  increase  of  a  divine  knowledge.  The 
Spirit  of  Life  becomes  the  universe,  which  is  always  and 
everywhere  a  fitness  as  well  as  a  becoming,  and  as 
much  so  at  the  first  (if  there  were  a  first)  as  it  can 
ever  be. 

Human  experience,  on  the  other  hand,  is  quite  dis- 
tinct from  these  cosmic  phenomena,  and,  considering 
its  scope  and  its  aims,  is  widely  different  from  that  of 
all  other  animals.  But  the  distinction  is  not  so  abso- 
lute in  reality  as  it  is  in  appearance.  There  seems  to 
be  a  great  chasm  between  a  voluntary  effort  which  in  a 
brief  period  accomplishes  its  purpose  and  those  physi- 
cal operations  which  for  the  attainment  of  a  similar  end 
would  take  millions  of  years.  What  a  vast  period  of 
time  is  occupied  in  the  development  of  a  human  hand 
or  eye  !  But  the  machines  invented  by  man  in  a  single 
century  give  him  a  hundred  hands,  and  enlarge  a  thou- 
sand-fold his  scope  of  vision.  In  making  his  engines 
and  his  telescope,  however,  he  is  compelled  to  avail 
himself  of  the  properties  of  things,  of  natural  forces 
and  laws,  and  it  has  taken  ages  for  him  to  learn  these 
uses.  He  can  arbitrarily  regulate  the  speed  of  his  ma- 
chinery and  the  power  of  his  telescope,  but  his  water- 
wheel  is  of  no  advantage  apart  from  the  gravitation  of 
water,  and  his  telescope  is  useless  apart  from  his  living 


THE  MORAL   ORDER  137 

eye.  He  cannot  impart  life  to  the  products  of  his  arti- 
fice, and  such  modifications  of  living  things  as  are  the 
result  of  his  deliberate  adjustments  are  really  brought 
about  by  vital  processes  that  in  themseh-es  are  inde- 
pendent of  his  will.  What  he  has  gained  has  been  ac- 
quired by  slow  and  faltering  processes,  and  as  the  re- 
sult of  innumerable  failures.  If  we  regard  only  the 
ends  which  he  consciously  proposes  to  himself  in  his 
experimentation,  these  in  themselves  are  utterly  vain, 
having  no  value  save  in  the  living  principle  from  which 
all  human  aspiration  springs,  and  which  reaches  its 
true  and  living  issue  only  as  it  overleaps  his  goals,  dis- 
closing their  unreality — the  emptiness  of  all  which  we 
call  a  conclusion  and  accomplishment. 


IV 

This  living  principle  is  hidden — it  is  the  secret  dis- 
position of  our  divine -human  destiny,  and  when,  in 
some  luminous  moment,  it  shines  through  all  its  veils, 
or  when,  in  some  flaming  moment  of  transformation,  the 
vesture  is  consumed,  then  indeed  our  con-  ^. 

Disposition 

scious  plans  and  propositions  are  disclosed        and 
as  mere  broken  fragments,  the  partial  seg-     '^°'^°^' '°"' 
ments  of  a  cycle  which  is  completed  in  a  movement 
that  escapes  observation.     This  hidden  life  it  is — our 
own  very  inmost  life — which  tianks  every  strongest  for- 
tress we  can  build. 

Now,  when  our  old  Nurse  Lethe  becomes  to  us 
Levana,  putting  us  away  from  herself,  setting  us  upon 
our  feet  and  turning  our  faces  toward  outward  goals, 


138  A  STUDY  OF  DEATH 

she  still  attends  us,  though  unseen.  She  lodges  cour- 
age in  our  hearts  to  meet  the  bewilderments  of  a  world 
that  at  once  tempts  and  betrays ;  she  assists  our  fal- 
tering steps,  making  inert,  resistant  matter  our  sup- 
port and  our  very  fears  an  inspiration,  deepening 
our  hearts  through  solicitudes,  enlarging  our  strength 
through  travail.  She  it  is  who,  though  taking  us  often 
back  into  the  merciful  oblivion  of  sleep,  yet  draws 
about  our  busy  day-dream  a  curtain,  hiding  from  our 
specialised  vision  both  the  fountains  and  the  issues  of 
our  life,  and  shutting  us  into  our  game  of  Hide-and- 
seek,  to  which  she  gives  zest  by  wonderful  surprises, 
showing  us  at  moments  of  defeat  gifts  more  precious 
than  those  we  have  sought  and  lost.  Following  our 
blush  of  shame  because  of  something  marred  or  missed 
is  seen  upon  her  countenance  a  special  grace — a  favour- 
ing glimpse  of  the  Ideal.  She  sets  us  at  our  looms, 
and  though  we  weave  but  shreds  and  shrouds,  text- 
ures whereby  we  are  clothed  upon  with  mortality,  she 
sometimes  gives  us  glimpses  of  the  other  side  of  the 
web,  where  it  is  mystically  seen  as  whole,  or  at  least 
suggests  some  beautiful  inward  integrity  marvellously 
contrasting  with  the  apparent  outside  raggedness.  The 
emphasis  of  Time  would  paralyse  our  hearts  but  for  her 
quickening  of  prophetic  hope,  showing  escape  where  we 
behold  only  a  barrier,  and  reserving  as  the  largest  of  all 
her  favours  that  last  release,  when  she  sets  our  feet 
toward  the  door  of  our  dwelling,  which  they  re-enter  not. 
While,  therefore,  our  experience  seems  to  us  experi- 
mentation for  the  most  part,  so  that  we  have  come 
to  look  upon  the  present  existence  as  a  period  of  pro- 
bation   and   even    to  think   of   eternity  as   dependent 


THE  MORAL    ORDER  139 

upon  time,  imagining  some  everlasting  mansion  pat- 
terned and  determined  by  our  shaping  of  its  mere 
scaffolding;  while  we  magnifj' our  exploitation  and  our 
conscious  manipulation  of  things,  laying  supreme  stress 
upon  arbitrary  choice  and  upon  human  responsibility, 
yet  such  a  view  interposes  an  irrational  chasm  between 
human  existence  and  the  general  course  of  things.  It 
is  especially  a  modern  view,  confirmed  by  the  impres- 
sions derived  from  an  extremely  specialised  order — in- 
dustrial, political,  and  ethical — where  artifice  seems  to 
displace  creation  and  the  thing  made  the  thing  that 
grows ;  where  formal  and  lifeless  mechanism  is  most 
conspicuous,  and  where  the  ends  proposed  appear  to 
be  as  far  removed  as  possible  from  such  as  lie  in  the 
line  of  natural  selection.  The  aggregation  of  people 
in  large  cities,  the  accumulation  of  wealth,  the  artificial 
conditions  of  civilisation,  the  absorption  of  so  many 
human  lives  in  efforts  to  secure  simple  subsistence,  the 
magnitude  of  enterprises  undertaken,  the  mastery  over 
natural  forces,  the  devitalisation  of  industry  through 
the  extreme  division  of  labour,  the  secularisation  of  in- 
stitutions, the  tendency  toward  a  social  collectivism  in 
which  the  individual  and  the  family  shall  be  subjected 
to  a  general  control,  and  the  supreme  confidence  of 
society  in  systems  of  reform,  and  in  the  power  of  statu- 
tory legislation — all  these  indicate  the  predominance 
of  arbitrary  over  natural  selection.  Free  human  will 
and  human  responsibility  are  transferred  from  the  cir- 
cumference of  a  specialised  order,  where  properly  they 
belong,  to  its  very  centre  ;  they  seem  to  overshadow 
all  other  factors  of  progress,  and  in  the  moral  order 
thev  claim  the  entire  domain. 


I40  A  STUDY   OF  DEATH 


In  the  absolute  sense  there  is  no  purely  arbitrary 
selection,  and  what  we  call  free  will  is  so  in  appear- 
ance only  and  by  virtue  of  limitation,  being 

No  Absolute-  .... 

ly  Arbitrary  the  ultimate  Specialisation  of  spontaneous 
Selection.  \Yii]^  j^gt  as  our  rcason  is  the  ultimate  spec- 
ialisation of  spontaneous  intelligence.  Choice  seems 
arbitrary  because  of  our  consciousness  of  its  most  deli- 
cate poise  and  balance  in  %  world  of  librations  only  less 
specialised ;  because  of  its  extreme  variableness  be- 
yond that  of  any  other  functioning  in  the  organic  realm, 
becoming  sometimes  even  caprice ;  because  also  of  its 
fallibility,  which  is  associated  with  the  empirical  or  ex- 
perimental. 

, Human  experience  is  not  divorced  from  human  des- 
tinj',  but  is  rather  its  masque,  that  which  man  proposes 
to  himself,  in  the  line  of  his  phenomenal  progression, 
disguising  his  secret  disposition.  All  appearance  dis- 
guises Reality.  There  is  the  Real  Will  with  a  hidden 
purpose  deeper  than  any  particular  intention — a  Real 
Reason  deeper  than  is  shown  in  any  definite  rational 
process.  The  Cosmos  hides  the  true  Logos — that  light 
which  lighteth  every  man,  and  which  is  the  Light  of  the 
World.  In  man  as  in  the  world  it  is  the  genetic  or  cre- 
ative that  is  hidden. 

Nothing  falls  outside  of  this  genetic  reality,  though 
everything  thus  seems  to  fall  outside  of  it  in  our  con- 
scious representation  of  a  world  to  ourselves.  There 
is  no  power  or  knowledge  separate  from  it.  We  say 
that  we  make  something  common  by  communicating  it; 


THF.    MORAL    ORDER  141 

in  reality  it  can  be  communicated  only  because  it  is 
common.  We  call  that  general  which  is  the  result  of 
our  generalisation,  but  the  ground  of  generalisation  is 
the  genetic.  There  is  no  familiarity  out  of  the  family 
or  home.  What  we  see  as  a  divided  living  is  genetically 
the  abounding  life — the  ground  of  multiplication;  what 
seems  to  us  under  restraint,  in  tension  within  walls  visi- 
ble or  invisible,  is  genetically  the  bounding  as  it  is  the 
abounding — the  ground  of  all  inhibition ;  what  we  see 
as  form  is  here  formative,  informing,  and  transforming, 
and  that  which  we  know  as  order  is  here  undistributed 
harmony.  Herein  is  the  eternal  life  —  to  know  the 
Father  and  the  Son — eternal  kinship,  eternal  familiari- 
ty. Life  in  this  transcendency  needs  no  chart  or  guide 
or  standard  ;  has  no  prudence  or  economy  or  any  moral 
virtue;  cares  not  for  any  structure  or  type;  it  stands 
for  all  that  falls  as  for  all  that  rises,  for  evil  as  for 
good,  for  divestiture  and  destruction  as  for  embodi- 
ment and  growth,  for  mourning  and  fasting  as  for  a 
festival,  for  the  old  as  for  the  new,  seeing  both  as  one 
— the  reaction  in  the  action,  repentance  in  regeneration. 


VI 

The  genetic  eternal  life  is  the  ground  of  all  action 
and   reaction,   which  are  proper    thereto    in   a  sense 
wholly  indefinable   in  our  specialised   con- 
sciousness.     No  predication  we  make  con-  ^^^hoj.-,  ■^"' 
cerning  the  action  and  reaction  as  seen  in 
the  visible  world — a  world  of  suspense,  where  begin- 
ning and  end  are  regarded  as  separate — is  applicable 


142  A  STUDY  OF  DEATH 

to  the  invisible  genesis  where  death  and  birth  (if  these 
terms  could  there  be  used)  are  inseparable.  Neverthe- 
less the  genetic  and  eternal  meanings  dominate  and 
give  significance  to  all  phenomenal  existence — consti- 
tuting the  bond  of  kinship  which  makes  the  whole  uni- 
verse the  Father's  House,  whatever  our  illusions  of 
flight  and  exile,  of  freedom  and  integrity. 

The  genetic  is  revealed  even  in  its  veilings,  and  in 
the  illusions  of  our  divided  living  it  has  a  varied  and 
beautiful  disclosure — a  confession  in  its  very  denial. 
In  the  inorganic  world  the  hiding  seems  more  complete 
because  we  see  that  world  only  on  its  dying  side,  in  its 
descent  and  diminution  for  the  ascent  of  organisms ; 
though  even  here  we  see  death  as  genetic,  the  barren 
becoming  fruitful,  the  desert  inflorescent.  In  the  invo- 
lutions of  the  organic  the  revelation  is  clearer  and  more 
intimate,  the  abounding  creative  life  showing  itself  in 
ascension,  growth,  and  procreation,  in  all  forms  of  in- 
crease signifying  its  original  authority. 

In  the  physiology  of  advanced  organisms  this  genetic 
authority  is  conspicuous,  though  its  source  is  hidden, 
residing  in  a  system  of  cells  quite  distinct  from  those  of 
the  general  system,  and  having  a  sacred  inviolability 
and  immunity,  secure  from  waste  and  expenditure  in 
ordinary  functioning ;  an  empire  far  withdrawn  from 
the  outer  courts  of  the  temple  of  life  into  its  Holy  of 
Holies.  The  nebulous  and  comparatively  unspecialised 
germ  plasma  dominates  the  whole  embodiment,  being 
the  source  of  its  motion  and  passion — the  physiological 
symbol  of  eternal  life,  of  that  which  was  from  the  be- 
ginning and  which  is  to  come.  This  tenseless  potency 
is  surrendered  only  in  such  germs  as  come  into  embodi- 


THE  MOR/iL    ORDER  143 

ment,  wherein  again  it  is  hidden,  since  of  its  kingdom 
there  is  no  end. 

In  the  human  world  the  dominion  of  this  principle 
is  supreme.  We  see  it  in  the  primitive  worship  of  an- 
cestors and  in  the  symbolism  of  all  sacred  mysteries ; 
it  is  associated  with  all  human  heroism  and  chivalry  as 
with  native  virtue  and  piety,  with  the  beautiful  in  art 
as  with  the  sanctities  of  home — the  one  lien  which  Nat- 
ure has  upon  man  in  the  most  artificial  conditions  of 
his  civilisation.  It  is  not  of  matter,  but  of  the  spirit, 
or,  rather,  it  is  of  matter  because  it  is  of  the  spirit. 
Man  is  the  incarnation  of  the  spontaneous  Logos,  where- 
of all  else  in  Nature  is  only  a  less  specialised  mani- 
festation ;  and  the  essential  idea  of  the  Logos  is  genetic 
— it  is  Sonship. 

We  dwell  upon  this  conception  of  the  genetic,  as  the 
basis  of  all  natural  selection,  of  vital  destination,  of 
harmonious  ordinance,  as  the  Reality  beneath  all  ap- 
pearances of  individuation  and  altruism,  of  separation, 
conflict,  and  association,  because  it  impresses  upon  our 
minds  and  hearts  the  sense  of  a  universal  homely  dis- 
position of  things  ;  also  because  in  any  order,  and  es- 
pecially in  the  moral,  the  Appearance  is  regarded  rather 
than  the  Reality. 

Birth  itself  is  a  break  with  the  eternal,  and  the  first 
deliverance  of  infantile  consciousness,  separating  the 
me  from  the  not-me,  is  the  beginning  of  a  perspective 
of  wonderful  beauty  and  variety,  pulsing  with  the  life  it 
veils,  at  once  an  involution  and  an  evolution,  a  folding 
away  of  the  self  and  an  unfolding  of  it,  and  in  the 
same  movement  an  assimilation  and  a  differentiation. 
Individuation  is  by  inclusion  and  at  the  same  time  by 


144  A  STUDY   OF  DEATH 

exclusion.  In  the  many-mansioned  house  when  one 
door  is  opened  another  is  shut,  when  a  fold  of  its  cur- 
tains is  drawn  another  side  of  the  fold  shows  a  with- 
drawing ;  a  falling  at  one  point  is  a  rising  at  the  next, 
so  that  the  whole  architecture  is  a  succession  of  living 
waves.  It  is  a  Passing  Scene — a  constant  Trope — a 
turning  and  a  re-turning.  Every  point  is  the  centre  of 
repulsion  and  attraction — one  the  complement  of  the 
other,  and  both  together  making  spheres  of  matter  and 
cycles  of  motion.  In  this  flowing  equation  the  very 
contradiction  of  the  two  sides  represents  their  identity 
— but  also  their  interchangeability.  This  Protean  me- 
tabolism is  the  outward  revelation  of  the  essential  con- 
substantiality  of  all  things  with  each  other  and  of  all 
with  the  Father.  The  hunger  of  every  desire  has  its 
satisfaction,  partaking  of  what  becomes  its  own,  only 
because  that  which  is  appropriated  was  already  its  por- 
tion— a  part  of  itself — as  God  is  the  portion  of  every 
creature.  Each  desire  is  in  the  line  of  its  special  ac- 
cords, but  the  largest  harmony  encloses  all  these.  The 
divided  living  is  a  specialisation,  but  in  the  eternal 
reality  all  that  the  Father  hath  belongs  to  the  prodigal 
as  to  the  elder  brother.  The  line  of  a  family  in  genet- 
ic succession  is  one  of  special  accords— of  special  at- 
tractions and  repulsions — and  in  this  line  vital  destina- 
tion is  pronounced  and  plainly  seen  to  be  inevitable ; 
but  in  its  destiny,  and  really  the  largest  part  thereof, 
is  included  the  dominion  and  service  of  the  univer- 
sal kinship  which  it  seems  to  exclude  as  alien.  The 
more  particular  specialisation  in  the  predilection  of  pri- 
mogeniture, both  as  to  honors  and  sacrifices,  privi- 
leges and  responsibilities,  is  really  an  exaltation  of  the 


THE  MORAL   ORDER  145 

genetic  principle  itself,  whose  glory  is  summed  up  in 
the  First,  Only,  and  Eternally  13egotten. 

The  real  Personality  is  a  mystery  transcending  any 
possible  mental  analysis.  The  analyses  attempted  in 
recent  psychological  speculation  have  but  one  result — 
the  multiplication  of  personalities  within  what  is  usually 
regarded  as  the  embodiment  of  one  ;  and  in  the  monad- 
ological  theory  the  multiplication  is  extended  indefi- 
nitely. Such  notional  analysis  is  itself  a  specialised 
rational  process,  hiding  the  real  truth,  stalling  it  in  the 
numerical  predication,  and  leading  to  just  such  irrecon- 
cilable contradictions  as  result  from  the  consideration 
of  a  divisible  Space  or  Time.  The  principle  of  divisi- 
bility is  itself  a  genetic  mystery,  which  is  disguised  in 
the  mathematical  process.  We  say  "  apart  from,"  ex- 
pressing distance — in  a  real  apprehension  we  would 
say  "  a  part  of."  *  Separation,  if  it  be  a  vital  depart- 
ure, is  the  breaking  of  a  union  which  still  remains  one, 
including  the  fragment.  This  is  not  Pantheism,  unless 
St.  Paul  was  a  pantheist,  declaring  that  in  God  "  we 
live  and  move  and  have  our  being."  To  think  of  our- 
selves as  "  without  God,"  and  of  our  wills  as  other  than 
indissoluble  from  His  will,  is  the  falsehood. 

Matter  is  not  acted  upon  by  other  matter,  as  indi- 
cated in  the  statement  of  physical  laws,  or  a  spirit  by 
other  spirits :  the  action,  including  the  reaction,  is  in 
each  but  of  ^\\.  There  is  no  dominion  of  quantity,  no 
majority.  The  infinitesimal  germ  balances  the  universe, 
and,  while  in  its  individuation  it  seems  to  hermetically 

*  The  word  part  has  itself  the  genetic  meaning  :  pars,  from 
pario,  allied  to  portio,  which  has  the  same  root  as  the  Greek  iiropov 
{ga'c'f),  perfect  nfTrpojTai  (it  is  destined). 


146  A  STUDY  OF  DEATH 

seal  its  integrity,  it  has  infinite  endosmosis — an  open- 
ness to  all  currents ;  and  though  it  seems  to  gather 
where  it  has  not  strewn,  yet  its  vital  use  and  posses- 
sion is  the  appropriation  of  its  own  :  it  is  in  debt  for 
no  endowment,  save  as  owing  and  owning  are  one. 
There  is  no  fund  of  potency  and  wisdom,  or  of  life — 
only  an  eternal  fount  of  these  which  we  call  our  Father, 
to  Whom  our  vital  relation  is  not  one  of  accountability. 
Neither  is  the  individual,  as  a  living  being,  indebted 
to  Society.  The  bond  is  vital,  conferring  upon  the 
individual  no  rights  and  devolving  no  duties.  Rights 
and  duties  are  not  pertinent  to  natural  laws,  but  only 
to  conventional  regulations  and  adjustments  growing 
out  of  the  specialisation  of  social  functions.  The  son 
has  no  duty  to  the  parent  from  his  sonship,  but  be- 
cause of  his  tutelage.  We  do  not  associate  debt  and 
credit  or  any  merit  with  parental  instinct  or  natural 
piety.  The  bond  is  so  close  and  intimate  that  these 
terms  are  not  adequate  to  its  expression.  But  the 
period  of  human  infancy  is  prolonged  far  beyond  the 
limitations  of  such  a  state  in  other  animals,  and  more 
extended  in  the  advanced  than  in  the  primitive  stages 
of  progress,  so  that  the  family,  though  primarily  a 
natural  institution,  involves  a  care  and  culture  over- 
stepping the  bounds  of  instinct,  varying  according  to 
circumstance  and  guided  by  rational  motives.  This 
special  tutelage  assumes  functions  whose  exercise  has 
an  important  bearing  upon  social  interests  outside  of 
the  family ;  it  is  moral  and  educational,  demanding 
outward  rules  and  standards  and  requiring  obedience 
and  conformity. 


THE  MORAL    ORDER  147 


VII 


The  patriarchate  is  the  similitude  of  the  Father's 
House,  and  in  passing  from  it  to  the  tribal  organisa- 
tion natural  vitalism  was  still  maintained.  When,  in 
more  complex  grouping  and  a  more  special- 
ised social  life,  a  conventional  bond  took  ^^t^os^J' 
the  place  of  the  primitive  sacrament  of  kin- 
ship, human  progress  assumed  new  aspects ;  and  in 
our  retrospect  of  this  departure  it  seems  like  an  en- 
trance upon  a  new  world.  As  in  the  first  development 
of  human  intelligence  the  rational  is  differentiated 
from  the  instinctive,  involving  a  peculiar  weakness  and 
also  a  peculiar  strength,  so  in  the  beginning  of  conven- 
tional institutions  this  differentiation  is  more  marked, 
and  with  the  weakening  of  living  bonds  there  is  fortifi- 
cation of  the  social  structure.  History  and  the  science 
of  history  deal  mainly  with  this  structure — with  the 
deliberate  human  efforts  engaged  in  its  elaboration, 
and  with  the  outward  conditions  affecting  the  growth 
and  decay  of  social  systems.  While  the  thoughtful 
student  regards  this  structure  as  a  living  organism,  a 
superficial  view  discloses  the  mechanism  only,  which 
has  indeed  the  semblance  of  an  organism,  but  seems 
independent  of  the  general  course  of  things — a  drama 
whose  scenes  are  shifted  arbitrarily  by  a  human  will  that 
has  somehow  broken  loose  from  the  universal  harmony 
— a  by-play  of  Destiny  rather  than  its  ultimate  expres- 
sion. We  are  apt  to  review  the  history  of  mankind  in 
the  lights  and  shadows  affecting  our  conception  of  the 
present  situation,  beset  by  problems  of  every  sort  that 


148  A   STUDY   OF  DEATH 

seem  to  defy  solution  —  a  transitional  situation  the 
issue  of  which  no  man  can  see.  Human  progress, 
thus  regarded,  appears  to  be  from  the  vital  to  the  un- 
vital,  from  the  strength  of  a  flowing  life  to  the  brittle- 
ness  of  mechanical  stability,  a  constantly  greater  sur- 
render of  potential  energy  for  structural  completeness. 
The  traces  of  that  golden  age  of  humanity,  which  our 
imagination  vaguely  locates  in  some  remote  past,  re- 
treat before  our  longing  backward  vision  until  they  are 
lost  to  view.  We  assume  that  at  some  unhappy  epoch 
in  the  very  dawn  of  history  man  abandoned  a  first 
estate  of  innocence  and  was  himself  abandoned,  thrown 
upon  his  own  resources  of  will  and  reason,  and  com- 
pelled to  win  his  way  upon  an  earth  accursed  for  his 
sake,  through  harsh  conflicts  with  a  hostile  nature  and 
with  hostile  aliens  of  his  own  race,  and  under  the  over- 
whelming shadow  of  jealous  gods  whose  angels  fiercely 
guarded  his  forfeit  heritage,  and  who  baffled  his  heaven- 
piercing  aspirations  with  such  confusion  as  befell  the 
builders  of  the  Tower  of  Babel — gods  who  were  wor- 
shipped because  of  fear  and  in  a  perpetual  ritual  of 
propitiatory  sacrifices.  We  picture  to  ourselves  this 
Marplot  of  the  universe,  this  Protagonist  who  by  his 
first  arbitrary  choice  involved  a  world  in  death  and 
woe,  as  forever  after  shut  into  such  edifices  as  his  arbi- 
trary choice  might  erect  for  his  pleasure,  protection, 
and  use,  and  in  all  his  ways  brought  face  to  face  with 
the  Death  whom  by  denying  he  had  invoked,  and  with 
the  dread  monsters  following  in  Death's  train  or  antici- 
pating his  approach.  The  development  of  this  victim 
of  so  many  pursuers  appears  to  us  the  result  of  his 
antagonisms,  and  especially  of  his  conflict  with  Death, 


THE  MORAL   ORDER  149 

whose  terrors  become  the  chief  inspiration  of  life,  giv- 
ing swiftness  and  suppleness  to  his  flying  limbs,  sharp- 
ness to  his  faculties,  and  cunning  to  his  intelligence; 
deepening  his  imagination ;  and  prompting  him  to 
build  monuments  that  shall  survive  his  brief  exist- 
ence. Even  the  procession  of  generations  appears  to 
be  a  defiance  to  the  arch-enemy,  each  one  that  passes 
smiling  in  the  face  of  the  great  Destroyer  and  pointing 
to  its  successor. 

Beholding  man  as  thus  the  arbiter  of  his  own  des- 
tiny, scheming,  ambitious,  and  selfish,  in  all  his  strug- 
gles seeking  and  slowly  gaining  vantage  by  the  sheer 
force  of  his  own  will  guided  by  the  light  of  a  mind 
built  up  by  experience,  and  considering  the  solicitudes 
and  apprehensions  attending  his  first  rude  exploitation 
of  a  refractory  world,  wrecked  in  his  own  ruin,  we  fol- 
low with  a  feeling  of  mingled  pity  and  admiration  his 
ruggedly  adventurous  career  from  his  first  attempts  to 
clothe  his  conscious  nakedness  until  his  habit  has  har- 
dened into  a  mailed  armour  covering  his  infinite  vulner- 
ability. While  all  living  things  erect  and  expand  their 
structures  in  apparent  defiance  of  gravitation,  and  he 
likewise  counteracts  this  force  in  his  upright  frame, 
using  it  and  breaking  it  in  his  gait,  yet  in  his  artificial 
constructions,  dealing  with  inert  materials,  he  must 
build  with  level  and  plummet  and  upon  a  firm  founda- 
tion. In  place  of  the  sureness  of  instinct  he  must  estab- 
lish for  himself  the  certitudes  of  reason,  and  in  accord- 
ance with  these  adjust  every  detail  of  his  individual 
life  and  of  his  more  elaborate  social  economies.  In  his 
reason  he  must  find  compensations  for  its  own  fallibil- 
ity, the  rule  for  righting  himself  against  his  many  falls. 


ISO  A  STUDY  OF  DEATH 

As,  according  to  this  view  of  history,  religion  is  born  of 
fear  and  the  love  of  mastery  is  nourished  by  incessant 
antagonism  against  hostile  elements  and  forces,  so  the 
shyness,  suspicion,  and  cunning  arising  from  apprehen- 
sion and  developed  in  constant  efforts  for  resistance  and 
protection  bring  one  tribe  into  war  with  another  or 
several  tribes  into  alliance  against  a  common  foe;  so 
that  it  is  through  conflict,  through  conciliations  to 
avoid  conflict  or  to  solidify  attack  or  defence,  and 
through  treaties  following  the  issues  of  conflict,  that 
the  larger  social  groupings  are  formed. 

In  this  more  complex  organisation  a  new  element  of 
weakness  calls  for  a  new  system  of  fortifications.  In 
the  single  tribe  the  blood  of  kindred  was  the  sole 
fountain  of  law,  and  morality  was  hardly  distinguished 
from  natural  piety.  Restraints  were  vital.  We  see 
from  the  scriptural  account  how  God  is  said  to  have 
treated  the  first  murderer,  sending  him  forth  as  a  wan- 
derer, but  setting  upon  him  a  seal  for  his  protection — a 
very  different  procedure  from  that  enjoined  by  the  Mo- 
saic law  for  the  government  of  the  aggregated  Hebrew 
tribes.  The  arbitrarily  devised  statutes,  for  the  regula- 
tion of  peoples  acknowledging  no  living  bond  of  social 
obligation,  seem  to  us  to  have  been  wholly  arbitrary, 
and  we  represent  to  ourselves  a  deliberately  wrought 
political  system,  with  conventional  allotment  of  prop- 
erty, of  rights,  and  of  duties,  and  even  the  fabrication 
of  a  secondary  conscience.  In  a  word,  formal  justice, 
regulating  every  social  economy,  takes  the  place  of 
the  natural,  living  control ;  and  the  substitute  appears 
to  us  so  inherently  weak  because  of  its  conventional 
character  that  we  inquire  how  it  was  reinforced.     The 


THE  MORAL   ORDER  151 

weakness  itself,  the  dire  necessity,  would  have  prompted 
to  rigorous  discipline,  to  a  severe  penal  code.  The  very- 
frailty  of  government  would  have  enthroned  the  gov- 
ernor and  hedged  him  about  with  divinity.  The  priest 
would  have  stood  at  his  side  and  forged  the  thunder- 
bolts of  heaven  for  the  enforcement  of  the  civil  edict. 
The  military  sacrament,  displacing  that  of  kinship, 
would  have  stood  for  protection  not  only  against  for- 
eign invasion,  but  against  internal  revolt.  The  inflexi- 
ble barriers  separating  castes  would  have  given  soli- 
darity to  the  social  structure.  Empires  would  have 
grown  by  conquest,  securing  peace  within  their  borders, 
and  fostering  the  culture  of  art  and  science  and  juris- 
prudence. Thus  Rome  became  the  mistress  of  the 
world,  nations  seeking  alliance  with  her  even  more  for 
the  benefits  of  her  stable  dominion  than  from  fear  of 
her  victorious  legions. 

In  this  benignant  atmosphere  a  sense  of  mastery 
succeeds  to  that  of  weakness,  and  the  poet  forecasts  a 
new  golden  age  of  world-wide  peace,  stability,  and 
equity.  The  will  of  man  has  conquered  Fate,  and  has 
caused  to  grow  in  the  garden  of  Experience  fruits  of 
virtue  outrivalling  any  products  of  Nature's  fairest 
fields.  It  has  especially  transcended  Nature  in  bring- 
ing to  bloom  the  thornless  rose  of  Merit — a  flower  to 
which  no  instinct  may  lay  claim  and  which  may  not 
fitly  lie  within  even  a  mother's  bosom^the  mead  alone 
of  Virtue's  brow.  Nature  can  bring  forth  only  new 
things  ;  Man,  by  the  exercise  of  arbitrary  selection, 
makes  a  better  world,  a  worthier  manhood  ;  against 
her  vagrancy  and  defect  he  shows  his  moral  rectitude 
and  the   faultless    symmetry  of    his   art ;    against  her 


152  A  STUDY   OF  DEATH 

prodigality  his  prudence  ;  against  her  spontaneity  and 
surprises  his  care  and  calculation  ;  against  her  undis- 
criminating  beneficence  and  pain  his  evenly  measured 
equity — not  yet  fully  realised,  but  perfect  in  its  ideal 
aim  and  sure  of  ultimate  outward  completeness. 

Has,  then,  the  Promethean  dream  come  true,  despite 
the  jealousy  of  Jove  and  the  arrows  of  Apollo  ?  And 
has  the  spark  the  old  Titan  stole  from  heaven  grown 
into  the  soft  flame  of  human  amiability,  courtesy,  and 
easy  tolerance,  subduing  ancient  enmities,  and  newly 
limning  the  face  of  man  into  this  frank  mien  that  shows 
no  traces  of  the  ancient  fear  and  furtive  cunning? 
What  betterment! — a  term  which  Nature  knows  not  in 
its  moral  sense  —  and  all  from  Choice,  the  device  of 
human  will  and  reason  in  their  revolt  from  a  first  nat- 
ure and  in  their  emancipation  from  its  bondage  !  The 
old  gods  have  new  faces — not  only  in  their  fashioning 
from  the  sculptor's  chisel,  but  as  feigned  by  human 
thought.  Long  ago,  in  the  inspiration  of  its  revolt 
against  the  nature-gods,  the  Hellenic  mind  had  found 
a  new  goddess — Athene  Parthenos  —  the  unbegotten 
virgin,  springing  fully  equipped  from  the  brain  of  Zeus, 
having  no  taint  of  that  injustice  which  runs  in  every 
line  of  Nature,  and  fitly  representing  the  completeness 
of  outward  integrity  —  the  Queen  of  the  Air,  the  pa- 
troness of  Athens  and  of  the  culture  whose  procedure 
is  by  arbitrary  selection.  Now  there  is  a  kindlier 
thought  of  all  the  gods.  Perhaps  they  were  benevo- 
lent, but  not  omnipotent,  themselves  limited  by  a  re- 
lentless fate,  which,  like  man,  and  possibly  with  the 
help  of  man,  they  could  only  slowly  overcome  ;  per- 
haps they,  too,  were  struggling  against  refractory  mat- 


THE  MORAL   ORDER  153 

ter  for  the  establishment  of  justice  and  for  the  ex- 
clusion of  darkness  and  death  and  evil  from  the  uni- 
verse. 

But  even  while  the  poet  dreams,  the  vast  empire  is 
crumbling,  soon  to  be  broken  into  a  hundred  frag- 
ments. The  Age  of  Gold  again  recedes  into  the  irre- 
coverable past,  and  philosophy  bewails  the  vanity  of 
all  the  labour  of  man  under  the  sun. 

A  new  civilisation  begins  the  building  of  its  temple 
of  Justice — an  association  involving  new  impulses  and 
motives  which  tend  to  the  enlightenment  and  emanci- 
pation of  all  peoples.  But  the  leaven  is  hidden,  and  in 
this  new  world,  as  in  the  old,  there  are  cruel  wars,  feuds 
of  caste,  the  development  of  selfish  interests  and  of 
altruism  as  the  expression  of  educated  selfishness ; 
slaveries  are  abolished  only  to  give  place  to  others 
harsher  and  less  vital  ;  and,  regarding  the  merely  out- 
ward aspects  of  all  human  economies,  we  seem,  at  the 
end  of  this  nineteenth  century,  to  be  approaching  an  era 
of  sterility  like  that  reached  in  the  development  of  the 
earth's  structure  before  the  appearance  of  cellular  life. 
From  such  a  consideration,  and  in  accordance  with  the 
cosmic  analogy,  we  might  reasonably  look  for  the  ad- 
vent of  some  entirely  new  order  of  terrestrial  beings  as 
distinct  from  humanity  as  the  organic  kingdom  is  from 
the  inorganic. 


VIII 

This  view  of  human  history,  while  containing  much 
that  is  true,  is  partial — distorted  by  false  dogma  and 
false  philosophy. 


154  -^  STUDY  OF  DEATH 

It  is  true  that  fear  has  been  an  important  element 

in  the  human  drama,  especially  the  fear  of  Death.    But 

in  the  dawn  of  conscious  endeavour,  in  the 

voivedln  th"e   earliest  intimations  man  gave  of  his  peculiar 

Superficial     destinv,  this  fear  was  not  an  oppression  and 

Retrospect.  ■' 

did  not  beget  panic  ;  it  was  the  shadow  of 
a  brightness.  Sensibility  trembles  into  its  outward 
manifestation.  The  eye  is  at  first  dazed  and  troubled 
by  the  light  to  which  it  awakens.  Yet  the  organised 
embodiment  reaches  in  man  its  greatest  eagerness  and 
hunger.  It  is  the  urgency  of  vital  destination  rather 
than  a  deliberate  choice,  an  inward  boldriess  showing 
itself  at  first  in  outward  shyness.  As  we  have  already 
seen,  the  advance  of  all  organic  existence  is  toward  a 
greater  peril,  a  more  conspicuous  mortality ;  and  in 
man  the  venture  trespasses  all  limits,  inviting  number- 
less risks.  How  violent  must  be  the  subjective  uncon- 
scious (or  sub -conscious)  will  which  maintains  its 
secret  disposition  despite  the  conscious  avoidance,  con- 
flict, and  solicitude  — characteristics  that  are,  indeed, 
much  more  apparent  in  the  attitude  of  modern  man 
than  in  that  of  a  primitive  race  !  The  difference  be- 
tween a  Roman  of  the  time  of  Marcus  Aurelius  and  the 
immediate  offspring  of  the  fabled  wolf-nursed  Romu- 
lus and  Remus  is  as  great  as  that  between  the  dainty, 
comfort-loving  kitten  and  its  fierce  feline  prototype, 
the  lion,  in  whose  heart  was  lodged  a  native  courage, 
generosity,  and  temperance,  sharply  contrasted  with 
the  cowardly  alarm,  the  developed  cunning,  and  treach- 
erous playfulness  of  its  sleek  descendant. 

Native  races  show  the  mark  of  an  urgent  destiny, 
which  is  hidden  more  and  more  with  the  development 


THE   MORAL    ORDER  155 

of  consciousness,  and  they  are  not  fairly  represented 
in  the  degenerate  cave-dwellers,  the  easy  preserva- 
tion and  exposure  of  whose  bones,  in  their  secure  re- 
treats, have  misled  or,  at  least,  unduly  impressed  the 
anthropologist.  We  are  apt  to  overestimate  the  con- 
scious weakness  of  men  in  those  periods  when  conven- 
tional institutions  first  began  to  overshadow  natural 
control,  just  as  we  exaggerate  the  artificial  character 
of  those  institutions.  The  potential  energy  is  at  its 
maximum  in  the  least  specialised  stages  of  human 
progress-,  and  though  the  outward  weakness,  leading 
to  much  faltering  and  stumbling,  is  manifest  to  our 
historical  judgment,  we  also  discern  indications  of  a 
natural  heroism  and  enthusiasm  which  gave  buoyancy 
to  enterprise  —  a  sublime  confidence  not  to  be  ac- 
counted for  save  by  reference  to  that  vital  destination 
which  defies  external  conditions,  transcending  experi- 
ence. The  human  will,  in  its  more  spontaneous  move- 
ment, had  no  help  from  a  logical  plan,  but  in  reality 
determined  the  plan  itself,  establishing  that  rhythm 
which  was  essential  to  the  social  order,  and  which,  in 
its  elaborate  distribution,  is  modulated,  losing  the  vio- 
lent impulse  in  the  regular  pulsation. 

The  social  evolution,  primarily  an  involution,  while 
producing  a  world  of  its  own,  distinctive  in  all  its 
aspects,  proceeds  by  natural  selection  as  does  all  cos- 
mic development— the  selection  in  either  case  being 
determined  by  the  living  will  and  not  by  environment, 
which  is  indeed  itself  only  the  result  of  this  sponta- 
neous and  harmonious  determination.  In  the  social 
as  in  the  cosmic  order  there  is  a  progressive  modu- 
lation of  forces,  and   tendency  to   uniformity  and   ap- 


156  A   STUDY  OF  DEATH 

parent  stability,  until  in  the  extreme  poise  of  the 
human  will  we  observe  an  apparent  indifference,  trivial 
casualty,  and  easily  shifting  caprice,  corresponding  to 
similar  indications  of  fortuity  and  inconsequence  in 
happenings  upon  the  surface  of  things  in  the  material 
world.  It  is  here,  in  the  field  of  the  extremely  trite 
and  partial,  quite  divorced  from  any  manifest  desire  or 
meaning,  that  we  become  casuists  and  fatalists,  seek- 
ing for  omens  in  what  is  least  pre-calculable,  making  a 
lottery  in  the  chances  of  indeterminate  allotment.  The 
original  divination,  however,  was  based  upon  the  spon- 
taneity rather  than  upon  the  mere  fortuity  of  these 
happenings,  which,  because  of  their  dissociation  from 
any  definite  mental  reckoning,  were  thought  to  betray 
a  hidden  divine  disposition.  The  chance  at  the  sur- 
face was  thus  associated  with  destiny  at  the  centre. 
To  the  ancient  mind  the  "fortuitous  concourse  of 
atoms,"  as  the  initiation  of  a  universe,  would  have  sug- 
gested divinity.  How  often  it  happens  that  the  Gate 
of  Accident  opens  upon  some  movement  hitherto  con- 
cealed from  our  conscious  observation,  but  which  has 
been  going  on  behind  the  curtain  of  the  "  common 
light  of  day."  When  we  touch  chance,  we  broach 
God. 

Destiny  is  only  another  name  for  Life  itself — Life 
considered  not  as  a  fund  upon  which  the  will  draws,  but 
as  itself  personal  Will,  and  sufficient  to  its  own  issues, 
as  not  only  from  eternity  consenting  to  what  in  time 
engages  its  forces  for  resistance  and  conflict,  but  from 
eternity  determining  its  embodiment,  its  limitations, 
and  death  itself. 

When,  therefore,  a  critical  point  in  human  history  is 


THE  MORAL   ORDER  157 

reached,  like  that  which  separates  civilisation  from  the 
simpler  native  conditions  which  preceded  it,  we  need 
not  regard  the  transition  as  abrupt  and  involving  the 
sharp  distinction  given  to  it  in  our  logical  analysis. 
We  look  upon  civilisation  as  a  kind  of  second  nature 
of  humanity,  but  it  is  not  the  less  nature,  nor  less  a 
part  of  human  destiny,  being  indeed  that  which  out- 
wardly distinguishes  man  from  the  brute  creation. 
Neither  is  it  less  spontaneously  determined,  however 
the  genetic  quality  may  be  hidden  in  artifice  and  con- 
trivance. There  is  nothing  in  the  dry  tree  that  was 
not  begun  in  the  green — not  even  its  dryness.  At  the 
extremity  we  see  in  fi.xed  form  what  at  the  centre  is 
formative  in  the  genetic  sense,  and  the  dead  leaves 
falling  disclose  the  seed,  so  that  genesis  is  proclaimed 
at  the  last  as  at  the  first. 

If  it  could  be  supposed  that  the  type  of  existence 
known  to  us  as  the  human  had  failed  of  an  earthly 
manifestation,  no  other  type  could,  through  whatever 
environment,  have  taken  its  place  ;  and  all  that  is  dis- 
tinctive to  this  type  in  its  actual  development  was  per- 
tinent thereto  from  the  beginning.  The  terrestrial 
headship  assumed  by  man  and  his  mastery,  in  Deed 
and  in  Interpretation,  were  intimated  in  his  simplest 
estate.  The  conscious  human  Accord,  in  tlie  full  per- 
spective of  its  harmony — to  which  no  other  note  in 
the  universe  is  alien  —  will  sound  true  to  its  original 
key,  whatever  the  variations  or  dissonances  in  its  pro- 
cession. 

But  for  the  upholding  and  sure  efficiency  of  vital 
destination,  life  w^ould  be  at  a  loss  at  every  critical 
turn.     Even  the   ant  or  bee  or  beaver,  if  there  is  a 


158  A  STUDY  OF  DEATH 

break  in  its  instinctive  construction,  has  some  flash 
from  the  broken  current  which  gives  a  guiding  light, 
helping  it  to  a  kind  of  conscious  recovery.  In  human 
experience,  by  its  very  terms  and  limitations,  an  inces- 
sant discurrence  calls  for  constant  recovery — so  that 
the  entire  existence  comes  to  seem  a  fault,  demanding 
redemption.  Every  illusion  of  the  phenomenal  world 
arises  from  this  brokenness,  inwardly  made  whole  when 
we  see  others  as  ourselves,  aliens  as  kin  ;  this  conscious 
vision  being  possible  only  when  the  perspective  is  com- 
plete. Destiny,  the  eternal  life,  has  the  mystical  vision 
of  the  kinship  from  the  beginning  even  unto  the  end. 
In  the  successive  sphering  of  self,  family,  tribe,  nation 
— each  individuation  being  in  its  special  involvement  a 
kind  of  seclusion  and  dissociation,  presenting  the  aspects 
of  conflict — there  is  the  vital  co-ordination  of  the  plan- 
etary system  of  humanity,  the  distribution,  throughout 
the  series,  of  the  harmony  which  becomes  the  system. 

Repulsion  —  the  dissociation  already  alluded  to  as 
necessary  to  integration,  so  that  to  the  family  the  neigh- 
bour seems  an  alien,  and  still  more  therefore  the  adja- 
cent tribe — is  shown  in  conflict ;  but  the  social  instinct 
was  always  a  re-agent  in  a  corresponding  attraction, 
without  which  there  could  have  been  no  conflict — that 
is,  none  that  could  be  distinguished  from  the  predatory 
and  destructive  warfare  waged  by  the  brute  beasts  for 
the  satisfaction  of  physical  hunger.  Hospitality  toward 
the  stranger  was  always  stronger  than  the  hostile  dis- 
position. Isaac  was  the  type  and  Ishmael  the  excep- 
tion. It  is  because  man  is  more  social  than  any  other 
animal  that  he  is  so  pre-eminently  a  fighter;  and  his  bat- 
tles have  even  an  element  of  romance  in  them  not  asso- 


THE   MORAL    ORDfIR  159 

ciated  with  struggles  for  mere  material  advantage  or 
for  the  "survival  of  the  fittest."  In  the  lines  of  destiny 
affiliation  lies  beyond  as  well  as  before  the  struggle, 
and  those  who  have  been  shedding  each  other's  blood 
mingle  their  blood  afterward  in  a  solemn  pact,  establish- 
ing kinship,  which  is  to  be  still  more  closely  cemented  by 
intermarriage ;  thus  the  civil  intercourse  that  follows 
has  not  wholly  passed  beyond  the  living  bond.  To  the 
victors  belong  not  only  the  spoils,  but  the  vanquished 
themselves,  so  that,  though  a  man  may  fail  to  be  his 
brother's  keeper,  his  victim's  he  must  be ;  and  some- 
times it  happens  that  the  situation  is  reversed,  as  when 
Rome  conquered  Greece. 

In  the  series  of  social  integrations  there  is  in  each 
some  point  of  departure,  of  flight  from  its  own  restrict- 
ed economy,  toward  something  outside  of  itself.  Desire 
is  itself  altruistic.  Reproduction,  even  by  fission  in  the 
lowest  organisms,  is  the  becoming  another.  This  altru- 
ism is  transformed  into  that  of  nutrition,  wherein  the 
hunger  of  one  individual  seizes  upon  another  for  assim- 
ilation. Marriage  is  out  of  the  family,  often  out  of  the 
tribe,  as  in  the  Roman  seizure  of  Sabine  wives.  "  More 
than  my  brothers  are  to  me,"  is  the  expression  of 
friendship  in  all  times.  Thus  life  confesses  the  larger 
kinship.  AUdilection  is  vital,  and  the  rational  element 
involved  is  only  its  light,  not  its  inward  motive.  It  is 
probably  true  that  integral  exclusiveness  begets  shy- 
ness and  human  contacts  take  first  the  outward  ap- 
pearance of  antipathy,  but  it  is  the  sympathy  which  is 
inwardly  dominant,  'i'he  plunge  into  the  cold  stream 
leads  to  an  inward  reaction  in  the  vital  current,  and  so 
to  <rreater  warmth.     It  is  because  of  the  dominant  in- 


i6o  A  STUDY  OF  DEATH 

terest  promoting  harmony  through  discord  that  native 
warfare  developed  generous  sentiments  and  a  discipline 
afterward  of  great  value  in  civil  administration.  The 
first  slaves  were  captives  taken  in  war,  and  their  capt- 
ure, being  the  alternative  to  their  extermination,  was 
one  of  the  alleviations  of  warfare.  Their  subsequent 
domestication  "  set  them  in  families  "  and  developed  in 
both  masters  and  slaves  the  loyalty  and  afifection  nat- 
ural to  so  intimate  familiarity. 

However  complex  the  grouping,  the  family  remained 
in  all  its  sanctities  and  tender  emotions,  and  was  an 
important  factor  in  all  strifes  and  alliances.  In  the 
most  complex  and  formal  of  all  ancient  civilisations, 
that  of  Rome,  we  see  in  the  last  pages  of  its  long  rec- 
ord how  persistent  to  the  end  was  the  worship  of  the 
Lares  and  Penates  and  the  care  of  the  ancestral  tomb 
within  the  sacred  precincts  of  the  home.  During  the 
period  of  Roman  civilisation  scarcely  a  single  animal 
was  added  to  the  number  of  those  which  had  been  do- 
mesticated in  primitive  times ;  but  these  tamed  beasts, 
in  so  far  as  they  were  directly  associated  with  the  land, 
and  the  land  itself,  could  not  be  sold  ;  they  were  sacred 
to  the  family.  In  all  ages  one's  country  is  his  father- 
land— patria — this  term  continuing  the  semblance  of 
the  patriarchate,  as  all  economy  is,  by  its  very  etymol- 
ogy, associated  with  the  household. 

The  civil  economy  grew  as  naturally  as  the  domestic, 
and  was  from  the  first  sustained  by  the  urgency  of 
sentiments  and  interests  which,  transcending  human  ex- 
perience, were  its  ground  and  not  its  product.  There 
was  no  need  of  new  reinforcement  from  any  source 
not  already  existing. 


THE   MORAL    ORDER  i6i 

Religion  cannot  properly  be  said  to  be  or  to  have 
been  a  necessary  sanction  of  the  moral  order.  Prima- 
rily morality  was  in  no  way  distinct  from  religion.  The 
secularisation  of  government,  ethics,  art,  and  philosophy 
went  on  fari J>assu  with  the  progressive  specialisation; 
and  at  the  same  time  religious  expression  was  in  like 
manner  specialised  and  in  the  same  degree,  itself  in 
its  outward  form  as  much  an  apparent  departure  from 
and  contradiction  to  the  central  spiritual  principle  of 
human  life  as  was  every  other  manifestation.  It  is 
only  because  of  this  departure  that  religion  has  seemed 
to  be  even  incidentally  a  sanction  of  morality. 

For  the  sake  of  clearness  and  at  the  risk  of  repeti- 
tion, we  must  here  revert  to  considerations  already  ad- 
vanced in  previous  sections  of  this  work.  The  original 
sacrament  of  kinship — the  fountain  of  primitive  piety, 
God-ward  or  man-ward — laid  no  more  stress  upon  jus- 
tice than  does  Nature,  save  that  it  was  not,  like  Nature, 
impartial  in  its  inequit}'.  It  claimed  indulgence  from 
the  human  or  divine  father  rather  than  justice — ex- 
cessive and  exclusive  indulgence.  With  the  expansion 
of  kinship  the  limits  of  exclusiveness  were  also  wi- 
dened, looking  forward  to  the  idea  of  the  All-Father 
— a  spiritual  idea,  the  perfect  realisation  of  which  is 
the  kingdom  of  heaven,  whose  inequities,  whether  of 
bliss  or  of  pain,  are  as  impartial  as  those  of  Nature — a 
kingdom,  moreover,  of  living  righteousness  rather  than 
of  formal  rectitude. 

The  illusions  connected  with  the  phenomenal  world 
— /.  e.,  the  world  as  represented  in  our  consciousness, 
and  as  affecting  our  volitions  directed  toward  outward 
ends — contradict,  or  seem  to  contradict,  the  Reality  of 


1 62  A  STUDY   OF  DEATH 

eternal  life  as  apprehended  by  that  consciousness  and 
determined  by  that  will  whereby  we  are  the  partakers 
of  this  life.  These  illusions  of  the  broken  world  to  the 
broken  mind  are  inevitable,  are  vital.  It  is  as  if  hu- 
man destiny  were  itself  thus  broken  and  specialised, 
making  for  us  the  beauty  of  color  and  sound  and 
speech  and  thought  and  feeling — at  the  same  time  also 
the  defect  in  these,  that  in  them  which,  while  essential 
to  all  integration  or  limited  embodiment,  must  work  a 
dissolution  of  every  synthesis,  wearing  the  bravest 
vesture  to  rags. 

These  illusions  belong  to  the  very  beginnings  of 
structural  development  in  religion,  art,  and  ethics ;  but 
in  these  first  aspirations,  where  the  difficulty  is  the 
greatest,  and  where  the  view  is  narrowest  and  there  is 
the  least  help  from  accumulated  experience,  the  poten- 
tial energy  is  miraculous,  overleaping  barriers,  lifting 
easily  the  burden  of  life,  with  a  strength  to  spare  that 
transcends  the  task,  and  solicitudes  are  not  oppressive. 
The  first  sacrifices  in  religious  rituals  are  not  propitia- 
tions but  festivals ;  the  first  art  was  spontaneous,  and 
the  pursuit  of  virtue  easy  and  natural.  In  the  golden 
dawn  the  prodigal  sets  out  upon  his  journey  with  no 
grave  misgivings.  The  sense  of  facility  comes  with 
the  descent,  when  the  uplifting  force  of  life  which  once 
lightened  and  vitalised  the  whole  structure  is  being 
withdrawn,  yielding  it  to  gravitating  and  destructive 
tendencies.  In  this  dull  twilight,  full  of  solicitudes, 
the  illusions  of  time  imprison  and  oppress.  The  bub- 
bling fountain  that  became  an  impetuous  torrent  is 
swallowed  up  in  the  dry  sands  of  the  desert. 

Every  manifestation  of  human  life  passes   through 


THE  MORAL   ORDER  163 

this  cycle.  The  reaction  is  in  every  moment,  hidden 
at  first  but  finally  conspicuous.  The  structure  gains 
upon  the  life,  absorbing  more  and  more  the  conscious 
will  and  attention,  until  it  seems  all  in  all;  the  impet- 
uous current  bears  man  on  to  the  completeness  of  in- 
tegral form,  which  he  regards  with  pride  and  strives  to 
hold  at  its  noontide  culmination  of  beauty  and  strength, 
its  full  content;  this  is  the  height  of  his  illusions, 
which  now  have  wrapped  him  in  their  luminous  veils, 
becoming  his  whole  expression,  his  very  thought  and 
language ;  but  while,  in  conscious  complacence,  he  re- 
joices in  his  integrity,  in  his  formed  character,  in  his 
complete  art.  in  his  argent-rounded  thought,  in  his  es- 
tablished polity,  and  in  his  consummate  religious  rite 
and  dogma,  his  inmost  will  repents  itself  of  its  accom- 
plishment, and  the  reaction  becomes  outwardly  evident 
in  induration  and  senescence. 

The  illusions,  then,  that  arise  in  the  human  con- 
sciousness from  the  specialisation  of  existence  and 
of  consciousness  itself,  pertain  to  the  whole  phenom- 
enal world,  including  human  experience ;  in  their 
beauty  and  glory  they  are  associated  with  the  passions 
and  aspirations,  tlie  attractions  and  repulsions,  the  as- 
similations and  jealousies  that  are  involved  in  every 
integration  of  individual  and  social  life- — fluent  in  the 
superabundant  vitalities  engaged  in  crescent  organ- 
isation, and  fixed  in  the  mature  and  stable  structure, 
where  they  are  stereotyped  in  scripture  and  speech,  in 
established  customs  and  codes,  in  the  formal  certitudes 
of  science,  in  the  canons  of  arrested  art  and  impulse, 
and  in  the  suspended  inspiration  and  ritualistic  ex- 
pression of  a  settled  faith  ;  and  in  their  graver  hues 


i64  A  STUDY   OF  DEATH 

they  blend  with  the  purple  shadows  of  dissolution, 
when  stability  itself  is  seen  to  be  the  flimsiest  and 
raggedest  of  all  the  veils  hiding  the  eternal  Reality. 
That  which  we  have  been  urgently  persuaded  to  call 
something  is  brought  to  naught ;  no  trace  is  left  of 
outward  goal  and  object — our  very  habitation  and  in- 
vestment gone. 

No  form  of  life  can  claim  pre-eminence  over  any 
other  as  escaping  these  illusions.  No  wise  virgins  of 
Religion  can  give  of  their  oil  to  the  foolish  virgins  of 
Art  or  Philosophy  or  Morality,  where  all  alike  are  shut 
out  from  the  Bridegroom's  presence,  save  as  in  every 
room — in  Academe  or  Hall  of  Judgment  as  in  a  Tem- 
ple—  He  is  given  lodgment  and  met  or  overtaken  on 
every  path  of  the  devious  pilgrimages.  To  all  alike  the 
veils  that  hide  are  the  only  revelations  ;  and  all  alike 
deny  as  well  as  confess — Peter  the  same  as  Judas. 

In  the  building  up  of  any  order  the  spiritual  princi- 
ple is  veiled  and  apparently  contradicted,  whether  the 
order  be  religious  or  moral ;  between  these  no  dis- 
tinction arises  in  human  consciousness  before  each  has 
been  so  specialised  as  to  take  the  form  of  a  definite 
system  ;  and  always  the  prevailing  characteristics  of 
the  one  are  those  of  the  other.  What  men  at  any  time 
feel  and  believe  socially  is  precisely  what  they  feel  and 
believe  in  their  religious  life,  the  rule  of  their  conduct 
showing  their  thought  of  the  divine.  If  they  have  a 
living  righteousness,  from  hearts  loving,  forgiving,  not 
judging,  generous  not  according  to  exact  measure,  with- 
out servile  fear  of  others  or  a  desire  to  inspire  such 
fear  toward  themselves,  then  to  them  God  has  this 
same  living  righteousness,  from  the  same  disposition 


THE  MORAL   ORDER  165 

of  heart.  What  men  think  it  is  right  for  them  to  do 
they  regard  also  as  the  righteousness  of  God.  If  they 
are  satisfied  with  formal  justice  and  with  conformity  to 
outward  standards,  then  they  deem  such  satisfaction 
an  essential  feature  of  divine  government. 

It  cannot,  then,  be  properly  said  that  religion  is  the 
sanction  of  the  moral  order ;  it  would  indeed  seem 
more  rational  to  derive  religious  doctrine  from  the  ex- 
igencies of  that  order,  since  those  features  of  the  latter 
which  grow  out  of  its  peculiar  limitations  come  to  be 
dogmatically  associated  with  divine  action  in  a  sphere 
where  such  limitations  cannot  be  supposed  to  exist. 
In  reality  religious  practice  and  thought  have  the  same 
tendencies  as  all  other  practice  and  thought — the  rite 
and  dogma  becoming,  in  the  specialisation  of  a  system, 
as  formal  and  unvital  as  an  outworn  state  ceremony  or 
a  stale  maxim  of  experience.  It  is  not  that  the  rite  or 
dogma  are  essentially  lifeless  or  insignificant,  but  that 
in  their  fixed  form,  their  integral  completeness,  they 
have  confined  their  life  and  meaning  within  the  form, 
which  has  itself  lost  plasticity,  and  that  as  an  expres- 
sion of  the  human  heart  they  have  become  automatic 
through  vain  repetition, 

"  Like  a  song  of  little  meaning  though  the  words  are  strong." 

A  creed  may  express  a  universal  truth,  a  spiritual  reality 
in  itself  so  profound  as  to  lie  at  the  very  root  of  life — 
such  a  creed  as  is  expressed  in  the  simple  phrase  Our 
Father,  which,  seen  in  its  genetic  reality,  transcends 
space,  time,  and  causation,  and  can  never  be  outworn. 
But  within  what  narrow  limitations  may  this  creed  be 


1 66  A  STUDY  OF  DH/ITH 

held  ?  We  need  not  go  back  to  find  its  provincial  limi- 
tation in  tribal  theology  or  the  early  Hebrew  theocracy ; 
it  is  equally  implied  in  the  latest  Te  Deum  sung  in 
all  the  churches  of  a  civilised  country  because  of  a 
great  national  victory.  In  every  social  organisation 
less  inclusive  than  that  of  a  universal  brotherhood  this 
simple  creed  must  be  denied,  and  in  the  competitions 
of  every  practical  economy  it  is  irreparably  broken 
and  compounded.  It  is  urged  by  those  who  desire  a 
revision  of  our  religious  creeds  that  these  should  be 
adapted  to  the  advanced  conditions  of  human  prog- 
ress; but  it  is  by  this  very  adaptation,  which  is  a  con- 
stant necessity  in  order  to  a  modus  vivendi,  that  their 
essential  principle  is  contradicted.  While  social  organ- 
isation at  every  stage  of  its  progress  brings  peoples 
nearer  together  and  expands  the  sentiment  of  human 
brotherhood,  developing  a  cosmopolitan  sympathy,  yet 
it  at  the  same  time  stimulates  competition,  multiplying 
its  opportunities  in  the  ever-widening  field  of  industrial 
enterprise  and  commercial  exchange. 

We  cannot  here  consider  the  possibilities  anticipated 
in  the  dreams  of  socialism,  and  which  may  indeed 
transcend  those  dreams  when  the  sentiment  of  hu- 
man brotherhood  becomes  universally  prevalent.  We 
are  here  confined  to  a  view  of  social  economies  as 
they  have  been  and  are  now  organised ;  and  in 
this  view  it  is  evident  that  both  the  religious  and  the 
moral  sentiment  accommodate  themselves  to  the  con- 
ditions of  social  organisation,  though  in  so  doing  they 
contradict  themselves,  slay  the  prophets,  and  crucify 
the  Lord.  It  may  more  truly  be  said  that  they  l^ecome 
that  organisation,  in  all  its  exclusions  and  inclusions — 


THE  MORAL   ORDER  1 67 

its  strifes  and  aftiliations ;  they  are  genetic  in  their 
operation,  and  in  becoming  that  which  contradicts 
themselves  they  only  express  the  tropical  action  and 
reaction  proper  to  life  itself. 

Thus  human  experience,  which,  in  a  superficial  his- 
torical retrospect,  seems  to  depend  so  much  upon  arbi- 
trary selection,  following  some  rational  plan  con- 
sciously devised,  appears  upon  a  closer  study  to  be  as 
spontaneous  as  nature,  having  its  roots  in  the  quick 
ground  of  a  life  invisible  and  inexplicable.  Its  possi- 
bilities are  incalculable,  and  it  is  as  difiicult  to  trace  a 
logical  plan  in  its  past  as  to  forecast  its  future.  There 
is  no  science  of  history,  and  our  philosophy  of  human- 
ity as  of  the  individual  man  is  confined  to  a  study  of 
growth  and  decay.  Our  mental  analysis  and  our  im- 
aginative constructions  fall  short  of  the  hidden  pur- 
pose, which  is  shown,  and  is  yet  to  be  shown,  only  in 
the  issues  of  Life  itself^Life  creative,  genetic,  tran- 
scending causation.  What  we  see  at  any  period  of 
history,  in  so  far  as  wc  truly  see  anything,  is  some  por- 
tion of  humanity  in  the  stress  of  social  integration,  all 
its  vital  forces  engaged  in  the  process,  eagerly,  passion- 
ately, and,  with  feverish  excess  of  zeal,  violently  seizing 
upon  all  earthly  materials  and  boldly  annexing  to  the 
terrestrial  realm  the  celestial  and  infernal ;  or  we  behold 
it  in  the  relaxation  of  these  energies,  in  a  process  of 
decline  or  degeneration.  'I'he  types  differ  —  as  the 
Hebrew,  Greek,  and  Roman  in  the  ancient  world — and 
with  them  the  kind  and  degree  of  accomplishment  and 
the  character  of  dissolution.  'I'he  same  external  con- 
ditions affect  different  races  in  different  ways,  and  an 


i68  A  STUDY  OF  DEATH 

extensive  movement,  like  that  of  the  mediaeval  cru- 
sades, involving  many  peoples,  produces  certain  results 
in  some  countries,  and  quite  diverse  or  even  contrary 
results  in  others.  The  genius  of  a  race  or  of  some 
individual  leader  standing  for  a  race  —  a  Caesar,  a 
Mohammed,  or  a  Napoleon — determines  the  political 
complexion  of  a  continent,  upsetting  all  previous  calcu- 
lations. Our  host  we  have  to  reckon  with  is  not  Logic 
but  Life — a  vital  destination  determining  distinctive 
types,  temperaments,  aspirations,  and  jealousies. 


IX 

The  categorical  imperative — what  we  call  conscience 

—  proceeds    from    the    practical    or    living   Will    and 

Reason,   and    the    form    of    the    mandate    is   plastic, 

according    to    the   vital   determination.     Its 

Conscience.  ...  ^  r        i 

variation  is  not  from  one  hxed  proposition 
to  another,  thus  presenting  itself  as  an  incongruous 
series  —  it  is  a  variation  in  the  disposition  of  life. 
This  imperative  is  a  bond  in  integration,  and  in  death 
an  absolution.  Take,  for  example,  the  family  rela- 
tion— of  husbands  to  wives  and  children  to  parents  ; 
this  involves  obligations  which  are  vital  to  social  in- 
tegration, and  which  are  varied  in  passing  from  a 
patriarchate  to  a  more  complex  society.  He  who  pro- 
nounced against  divorce,  when  asked  whose  wife  she 
should  be  in  the  resurrection  who  had  had  seven  suc- 
cessive husbands  in  this  life,  regarded  the  question  as 
not  pertinent  to  the  state  awaiting  us  which  should 
know  no  marriasje.     He  taught  that  the  commandment 


THR  MORAL    ORDER  169 

to  observe  the  Sabbath  was  for  man  and  not  man  for 
the  commandment — a  truth  appUcable  to  all  command- 
ment, which  must  be  a  vital  requirement. 

All  selection  is  for  a  living  use  in  the  most  com- 
plex as  in  the  simplest  social  order.  What  in  a  no- 
madic habit  is  a  quick  taking  and  leaving  becomes  in 
more  stable  communities  a  long  holding  and  a  slow 
release ;  the  suspense  is  emphasised.  The  co-ordi- 
nation of  an  elaborate  system  affects  the  sentiment  re- 
lating to  property,  reputation,  rights,  and  duties.  The 
categorical  imperative  reaches  out  to  every  manifold 
detail;  and  in  all  relations  honour  yields  honesty  and 
faith  fidelity.  The  fruits  in  the  garden  of  experience 
are  growths  and  not  mere  fashions  arbitrarily  wrought 
by  cunning  artifice ;  even  the  flower  of  Merit  has  its 
living  root,  however  much  in  its  nice  human  culture  it 
may  have  lost  of  the  wild  flavour  of  its  native  stock. 
The  honey  of  the  hive  is,  not  far  away,  the  wild  honey 
of  the  tree.  The  grape  in  the  autumn  sunshine  seems 
to  invite  the  bruising  of  the  contrived  human  press  that 
so,  by  its  ultimate  fermentation,  it  may  yield  its  finer 
spirit.  The  things  men  try  for  or  by  which  they  are 
tried  are  in  themselves  nothings,  nor  has  the  trial  itself 
any  meaning  apart  from  the  spontaneous  life  which  is 
the  ground  of  all  experience.  The  doors  we  knock  at 
with  importunity,  or  which  we  unlock  by  the  mechanic 
leverage  of  our  keys,  open  to  the  treasures  of  life, 
which  have  no  wealth  save  for  that  life's  native  abun- 
dance. Opportunity  and  temptation  have  only  the  sub- 
jective significance  given  them  by  the  heart's  desire. 
Our  existence,  in  so  far  as  it  has  worth  and  beauty 
and  dignity,  is  made  up  of  passions,  which,  however 


lyo  A  STUDY   OF  DEATH 

modulated  in  temperament,  must  for  their  freshness 
be  forever  renewed  from  their  inmost  source,  and 
which  are  never  very  far  removed  from  the  native  at- 
tractions and  repulsions  that  originally  determined 
their  spheres  and  orbits.  We  do  not  prize  unim- 
passioned  goodness.  Culture  is  worthless  save  for 
its  secret  inspiration. 

Accordingly  we  find   that  human   sentiment,  in   the 

most  refined  civilisation   and  brought    into    its   most 

orderly  realm,  is  not  so  much  a  revolt  from 

Convention  •' 

not  a  Revolt    Nature  as  in  many  of  its  moral  aspects  it 

from  Nature.  t  y-.  •  .  •  i 

seems  to  be.  Conscious  restraint,  or  rational 
control,  regarded  as  a  moral  merit,  is  but  a  specialised 
form  of  that  inhibition  which,  unconscious  and  un- 
trained, is  yet  a  more  potent  and  surer  bond  in  all 
natural  operation.  There  is  no  such  temperance  attain- 
able as  that  which  Nature  has  spontaneou.sly — no  posi- 
tive purity  like  that  of  passion  itself.  The  conscious 
voluntary  effort  in  this  direction  has  its  ground  in  the 
inward  temper. 


X 

Rectitude  rigidly  conceived,  whose  sign  is  a  straight 
line,  is  not  a  living  ideal,  but  in  every  real  motion  it 
Formal  is  3.  notional  standard  which  is  shunned  as 
Justice,  .^ygji  g^g  sought.  Righteousness  has  its  out- 
ward notional  standard  of  formal  justice,  but  no  real 
righteousness  is  ever  truly  represented  by  the  even 
balance  of  the  scales.  The  flowing  equation  of  life 
suggests  compensation,  but  cannot  even  for  an  infini- 
tesimal   moment   rest    therein.     There    is    no    motion 


THtl  MORAL   ORDER  171 

but  for  some  preponderance  that  disturbs  equilibrium. 
A  single  inflexibility  in  any  order  would  destroy  it. 
Justice  even  in  its  own  field  refuses  to  be  just. 

Having  reference  to  illusory  appearance,  we  think 
that  our  aim  is  to  secure  rectitude,  justice,  stability; 
but,  as  in  nature  there  is  no  point  of  rest,  so  in  human 
nature  satisfaction  seeks  emptiness  as  eagerly  as  emp- 
tiness satisfaction.  Men  neither  desire  to  render  or  to 
receive  absolute  justice,  having  therefor  a  contempt 
as  for  anything  Laodicean.  Even  in  business,  a  dollar 
is  parted  with  for  the  sake  of  or  received  at  the  risk  of 
usury ;  and  the  zest  of  all  commercial  exchange  is  the 
thought  of  vantage  on  either  side  ;  and  as  a  benefit  is 
given  as  well  as  taken,  the  barter  resembles  that  benefi- 
cent and  complementary  interchange  always  going  on 
in  Nature.  Any  withdrawal  from  this  commerce,  by  a 
refusal  to  expend  or  to  produce,  checks  the  natural  in- 
crease and  tends  to  sterility.  The  general  disposition 
of  the  merchant  is  toward  an  overflowing  measure 
rather  than  the  close,  hard  bargain.  Men  love  to  act 
the  part  of  the  host,  and  are  gracious  enough  also  to 
cheerfully  receive  hospitality.  In  such  amenities  they 
console  themselves  for  the  necessary  restraints  upon 
their  generosity  imposed  by  the  conditions  of  trade  ; 
and  one  of  the  sweetest  graces  of  home  is  that  there 
one  may  give  and  take  with  no  thought  of  return.  Few 
are  they  who  keep  within  bounds  even  in  the  perform- 
ance of  duties,  especially  of  those  duties  which  involve 
sentiment ;  few  who  are  careful,  prudent,  or  thrifty 
enough  to  manage  a  business  for  themselves,  or  who, 
in  subordinate  positions,  do  not  overdo  service  ;  few 
who  are  as  conscious  of  their  merits  as  they  are  self- 


172  A  STUDY  OF  DEATH 

reproachful  for  their  faults ;  few  indeed  who  do  not 
carry  altruism  to  a  mischievous  extreme,  regarding  the 
affairs  of  others  more  than  their  own. 

As  every  natural  tendency  is,  as  Emerson  says,  "  over- 
loaded," so  in  human  conduct  every  sentiment  engaged 
is  overcharged  and  runs  into  excess.  Men  are  enthu- 
siastic and  intemperate  in  their  patriotism  ;  they  will 
not  measure  their  loyalty.  They  retain,  as  long  as  they 
may,  devotion  to  a  personal  sovereign  for  the  vitality  it 
seems  to  have  as  compared  with  the  service  of  even  an 
ideal  commonwealth.  They  cling  to  an  intimate  house- 
hold economy,  even  if  it  involves  slavery,  or  to  a  feudal 
bond,  until  in  the  relentless  course  of  progress  they  are 
perforce  emancipated.  In  a  democracy  based  upon  uni- 
versal suffrage  the  masses  of  men  will  yield  to  the  mas- 
tery of  leaders  rather  than  to  that  of  ideas,  regardless 
of  material  interests  at  stake,  and  will  fight  for  a  preju- 
dice sooner  and  with  more  zeal  than  for  an  ethical  prin- 
ciple. They  will,  indeed,  more  readily  follow  the  leader- 
ship of  good  men  than  that  of  demagogues,  if  they  are 
thus  brought  into  an  association  of  sympathetic  fellow- 
ship instead  of  being  invited  by  argument.  Humour 
and  prejudice  are  more  vital  than  logic. 

In  religion  also  the  human  disposition  rebels  against 
a  measured  service,  and  the  desire  of  the  heart  could  not 
be  satisfied  by  a  divine  ministration  exactly  compensa- 
tory. Man  wants  nothing  of  divine  justice  ;  his  appeal 
is  to  a  partial  and  special  providence,  to  paternal  indul- 
gence. If  punishments  apprehended  are  incommensu- 
rate with  the  offence,  in  his  imagination  of  them,  the 
hoped-for  rewards  are  equally  incommensurate  with  any 
possible  merit.     In  all  genuine  faith  from  the  begin- 


THF.    MORAL    ORDF.R  1 73 

ninc^,  Grace  has  been  tlie  essential  divine  quality — the 
basis  of  a  forgiveness  as  free  as  the  fallibility  of  man 
is  inevitable. 


XI 

Progress  in  all  systems  has  tendencies  that  seem  to 
contradict  human  sympathy  and  faith.  Every  human 
synthesis,  become  a  sphere,  hardens  at  the    , .  .    . 

■'  ^  '  Limitation 

surface,  and  the  superficial  contacts  in  the  and 
field  of  outward  experience  disclose  the  hard- 
ness and  intractability  and  attrition.  It  is  here,  in  a 
field  of  effort — training,  culture,  severe  discipline^that 
the  sense  of  arbitrary  volition  is  intensified ;  here,  in 
this  scant  and  rocky  soil,  that  man  cultivates  the  hardy 
virtues  which  are  prized  exceedingly  as  the  fruitage  of 
patient  toil ;  here  where  he  stumbles  most  that  he 
idealises  rectitude  ;  here  where  he  is  a  pupil,  gaining 
knowledge  and  power  by  slow  acquirement,  tliat  the 
aim  of  all  life  seems  to  be  improvement,  betterment. 
Here  are  his  varied  and  exquisite  pleasures  as  well  as 
his  pains  ;  his  successes  as  well  as  his  failures ,-  the 
llush  of  pride  as  well  as  the  blush  of  shame. 

The  induration,  like  the  limitation,  is  a  Mercy,  the 
express  favour  of  a  life  lost  for  an  exquisite  sensibility 
and  capacity  through  which  it  is  consciously  recovered. 
This  human  incarnation — the  latest  and  most  wondrous 
of  all  creative  miracles  known  to  us — surely  it  was  the 
divine  longing  from  the  beginning,  gained  only  after 
many  avatars.  Eagerly  the  water  became  the  wine  and 
tiie  wine  the  blood,  until  in  psychical  man  the  univ-crse 
is  reflected  as  in  a  microcosm.     He  stands  upon  an 


174  A   STUDY   OF  DEATH 

earth  dulled  and  stilled  for  his  sake,  stands  where  the 
sun  meets  the  dark  glebe  and  gives  forth  a  warmth  not 
known  to  interstellar  spaces  ;  he  rejoices  in  the  same 
intimate  warmth  through  all  his  pulses  and  in  the 
breath  of  the  tempered  and  tempering  atmosphere. 
Light  is  broken  for  his  eye  and  sound  for  his  ear,  and 
the  whole  world  for  his  varied  hunger.  After  the  tre- 
mendous clashings  of  the  elements  and  in  the  midst  of 
clashings  still  continued,  but  which  he  perceives  not, 
there  is  this  armistice  for  his  peace,  this  suspense  for 
the  happiness  of  his  dwelling.  The  isolation  of  his  in- 
dividuality is  a  blissful  seclusion  into  whose  penumbra 
only  the  predestined  guest  may  enter,  who,  however  re- 
pellent in  his  first  guise,  is  afterward  surely  unmasqued 
as  an  accordant  friend.  The  day  is  meted  to  his 
measured  effort  and  the  night  to  the  measured  rhythm 
of  his  sleep.  As  his  pulse  repeats  itself  for  his  body's 
growth,  so  does  the  pulse  of  memory  and  habit  for  the 
gradual  increase  of  his  experience.  The  successive 
days,  like  the  successive  moments,  are 

"Linked  each  to  each  by  natural  piety," 

and  he  does  not  see  what  wondrous  change  is  in  the 
transition,  and  that  what  seems  to  him  continuous  is  a 
series  of  deaths  and  resurrections  ;  the  dead  quietly 
buries  its  dead,  and  each  day  is  new,  not  overmuch 
troubled  by  the  ghost  of  yesterday  or  the  shadow  of 
to-morrow.  The  blessed  oblivion  of  the  past  and  igno- 
rance of  the  future  secure  the  clearness  of  the  present, 
giving  to  each  moment  its  particularity  and  that  suffi- 
ciency which  it  properly  has,  since  in  it  is  eternity,  as 
in  every  particular  is  the  universe.     In  this  comforta- 


THF.   MORAL   ORDHR  175 

l)Ie  seclusion  he  does  not  hear  the  <:;rass  ^xow  and  is 
not  sensible  of  the  swift  motion  of  the  earth  in  space ; 
his  communication  and  correspondence  are  well  guard- 
ed, so  that  but  little  of  the  joys  and  sorrows  of  the  wide 
world  enter  to  confuse  his  individual  portion,  which  is 
itself,  whether  sad  or  joyous,  an  allotment  by  littles  and 
tempered  to  his  limitations.  As  pet  names  take  the  form 
of  diminutives,  so  our  intense  delights  and  sympathies 
are  inseparably  associated  with  our  limitations,  with  what 
is  petty  and  partial  in  our  lot.  Fidelity  in  small  things 
is  the  test  of  the  faithful,  who,  though  they  may  be 
made  rulers  over  many  things,  still  hold  the  small  things 
nearest  and  dearest,  finding  in  close  intimacies  the  home- 
liness of  existence.  The  wife  of  one's  bosom,  the  few 
friends  of  choice — these  for  nearly  all  men  make  up 
the  sum  of  all  that  gives  joy  and  worth  and  dignity  to 
the  earthly  life,  and  the  virtues  and  duties  born  of  these 
are  christened  again  with  colder  names  for  larger  asso- 
ciations. Here  is  the  nucleus  of  all  social  order,  pre- 
served fresh  and  tender  by  the  very  hardnesses  of 
elaborate  system,  as  the  soft  children  are  guarded  by 
the  toil-hardened  hands  of  parents,  whose  wearisome 
routine  encircles  them  w'ith  a  wall  of  defence.  All  in- 
durations are  walls  about  the  free  play  of  life  within. 
So  fortitude  becomes  sacrifice.  The  more  complex  and 
formal  and  unyielding  the  social  order  is  in  its  outward 
structure,  the  more  nearly  does  it  secure  the  inviola- 
bility of  the  individual  and  domestic  seclusion.  The 
sign  of  life  within  the  veil  of  the  temple  seems  reversed 
in  the  outer  courts,  becoming  the  contradictory  sign. 
The  flexible,  the  flowing,  the  spontaneous  becomes 
there  the  fixed,  the  arbitrary,  the  inllexible.      Grace 


176  A  STUDY  OF  DEATH 

there  becomes  Justice,  the  Trope  of  Hfe  relentless 
Atropos.  Thus  life  is  fully  clothed  upon  with  mor- 
tality. 

As  it  is  the  complex  vertebrate  animal  which  is  also 
the  warm-blooded  and  delicately  nerved,  and  as  the 
tough  shell  encases  the  sweet  kernel  or  vital  germ,  so 
that  ancient  civilisation  in  which  the  family  institution 
was  regarded  the  most  precious  and  important,  and  in 
which  close  intimacies  had  the  deepest  sincerity,  so 
that  it  gave  to  the  modern  world  the  name  for  piety 
and  every  other  virtue,  developed  also  from  the  sacred 
domestic  penetralia  the  most  complete  system  of  public 
functions  and  laws,  the  highest  dignity  and  most  in- 
violable obligations  of  citizenship,  the  most  binding 
soldier  sacrament,  and  the  toughest  fibre  of  an  imperial 
structure,  thus  becoming  the  very  backbone  of  the 
world  it  dominated. 

But  the  hard  envelope  about  the  seed  must  be 
broken  for  the  seed's  germination  and  new  abundance, 
contributing  in  its  dissolution  to  the  sustenance  of 
the  fresh  growth,  as  in  its  outward  completeness  it 
served  for  protection  ;  so  the  induration  of  all  human 
systems  is  the  indication  of  their  maturity,  their  readi- 
ness for  death  ;  their  suns  at  apogee  have  proclaimed 
a  new  summer.  The  systems,  like  generations,  pass 
away,  not  because  of  their  imperfections,  but  rather  be- 
cause they  have  reached  such  perfectness  as  their  scope 
has  permitted  ;  not  to  give  place  to  the  better,  but  to 
the  new.  In  this  passing,  that  which  seemed  stable 
and  inflexible  becomes  the  flowing ;  that  which  seemed 
complete  discloses  its  corruptibility ;  all  that  has  been 
formed   or  acquired,  whatever   its  excellence,   beauty, 


THE   MORAL    ORDl'.R  177 

and  loveliness,  is  brouj^ht  to  naught,  save  for  its  ser- 
vice of  descent — its  liberation  of  the  spirit. 

"So  God  fulfils  himself  in  many  ways 
Lest  one  good  custom  should  corrupt  the  world." 


XII 

In  the  completion  of  the  cycle  is  confessed  its  spirit- 
ual principle,  which  in  the  stress  of  structural  forma- 
tion and  functioning  was  obscured  and  apparently  con- 
tradicted.    ///  articulo  mortis  is  uttered  the 
true  countersign  to  the  eternal  verity ;  and  ^"''^  p.""' 

°  ■>  '  f esses  Life. 

it  is  seen  that  stability,  fi.vity,  immutability, 
and  infle.\ibility  are  not  pertinent  to  the  eternal  life — 
that  these  are  terms  which  destroy  themselves  by  nat- 
ural termination  and  recourse. 

To  the  eye  of  sense,  regarding  the  worth  of  the 
structure  as  belonging  to  the  edifice  itself,  seeing 
beauty  and  truth  only  in  the  formed  thing — the  formed 
mind,  the  formed  character,  the  acquired  e.\-perience — 
and  the  good  of  anything  only  in  its  possession,  this 
vastation  of  a  system  seems  utter  vanity;  but  to  the 
spiritual  apprehension  the  loss  is  wholly  gain — redemp- 
tion, rehabilitation,  a  new  creation  ;  the  eternal  life, 
itself  the  truth,  beauty,  and  charm  of  all  that  is  visible, 
depends  not  upon  any  structure  or  acquisition. 

It  is  because  the  eternal  life  is  in  the  bright  day 
that  we  ask  for  its  continuance  and  regret  its  decline ; 
also,  it  is  because  of  this  eternal  life  in  it  that  it  can- 
not stay ;  but  that  life  is  in  the   darkness   as  in  the 


178  A  STUDY  OF  DEATH 

light.  Happily  our  conservatism,  sound  and  whole- 
some as  it  seems,  nay,  as  it  is,  at  the  noontide  of  ma- 
ture integrity,  like  the  fixed  fibre  of  the  strong  oak,  is 
itself  the  habit  of  induration,  ready  to  fall  into  the  rou- 
tine of  descent  and  release,  and  serving  as  it  falls.  So 
turns  the  planet  into  new  dark,  new  dawn.  So  turns 
the  Wheel  of  Life. 

It  is  only  in  our  conscious  representation  to  our- 
selves of  life  seen  in  a  partial  arc  of  its  cycle  that  even 
in  ascending  movements  there  seems  to  be  a  con- 
flict with  death.  It  is  here  that  death  is  included  in 
its  essential  meaning  for  the  constant  renewal  of  youth. 
It  is  a  part  of  our  planetary  opacity  and  confinement, 
and  because  our  attention  is  fixed  upon  outward  uses, 
that  we  regard  evil  as  merely  disciplinary  and  our  pres- 
ent existence  as  peculiarly  a  probation — the  contracted 
ante-chamber  of  eternity.  The  emphasis  of  Time  pre- 
vents our  seeing  that  our  existence  now  is  as  truly 
grounded  in  the  eternal  as  it  ever  can  be,  and  that 
this  is  the  ground  of  our  reconcilement  with  all  that 
we  contend  with  and  resist. 


XIII 

If  our  exile  were  real,  if  we  could  really  leave  the 
Father's  house,  if  by  some  chasm  Time  were  divorced 
from  Eternity,  and  if  human  existence  were  wholly  ex- 
perimentation, consciously  regulated  and  in 
^InTime '*'  ^^^  entirety  determined   by  arbitrary  choice 
on  a  rational  plan — as  from  partial  aspects 
it  seems  to  be — then  indeed  might  w-e  pray  for  absolute 


THF.    MORAL    ORDER  179 

annihilation.  In  this  view  the  moral  order  would  be  a 
system  of  inextricable  confusion.  If  we  can  believe  in 
such  separation  of  humanity  from  its  Lord  that  our 
life  is  hidden  elsewhere  than  in  him,  then  is  inevitable 
that  other  belief,  formulated  in  the  extreme  rational- 
istic specialisation  of  dogma,  that  there  are  dread 
realms  of  unutterable  woe  forever  excluded  from  the 
divine  presence  and  from  the  operation  of  divine  laws 
and  uses.  If  the  material  is  separated  by  an  impassa- 
ble chasm  from  the  spiritual,  then  may  we  accept  the 
dualism  of  the  Manicha.-ist  or  adopt  the  scepticism  of 
the  biologist  who  asserts  that  matter  only  is  eternal 
and  that  the  entire  realm  of  life  is  but  a  fleeting  mo- 
ment of  cosmic  time,  a  shuddering  pulsation  that  for 
an  instant  disturbs  the  monstrous  and  heartless  mech- 
anism, an  alien  dream  as  inexplicable  as  it  is  transient. 
If  his  rectitude,  his  formed  character  —  that  outward 
integrity  which  he  builds  up  for  himself — is  at  its  very 
best  man's  only  blessedness,  then  is  his  experience 
vain  ;  if  that  whereof  he  is  ashamed  or  that  of  which 
he  is  proud,  if  what  he  consciously  shuns  or  what  he 
consciously  seeks  be  the  full  measure  of  his  evil  or  of 
his  good,  then,  in  the  superficial  jaggedness  of  the 
things  wherein  he  is  entangled,  is  his  destiny  the  most 
trivial  of  inconsequences,  the  ultimate  caprice. 

Not  thus  is  he  to  be  accounted  for,  and  never  in  the 
depths  of  his  spiritual  being  has  he  thus  accounted  for 
himself — as  if  he  were  a  fragment  of  the  world,  appear- 
ing suddenly  upon  the  ocean  of  existence,  moved  this 
way  and  that  by  varying  winds  and  currents  and  by 
the  whims  of  his  own  variable  and  near-sighted  intelli- 
gence, and  then  as  suddenly  submerged  beneath  the 


i8o  A  STUDY  OF  DE/iTH 

waves.  He  never  had  a  spiritual  philosophy  which  did 
not  make  him  one  with  the  Eternal — which  did  not 
make  him  the  measure  and  explanation  of  the  world 
rather  than  the  world  the  measure  and  explanation  of 
him — one  in  which  the  scope  of  his  evil  and  of  his 
good  did  not  embrace  all  evil  and  all  good.  In  him 
alone  did  life  awake  and  think  and  speak,  but  not  thus 
did  he  forego  his  share  in  the  eternal  silence.  What- 
ever his  forfeit,  it  compromised  the  universe,  and  en- 
gaged all  the  powers  of  the  universe  for  his  redemp- 
tion. No  transaction  could  in  its  scope  be  too  far- 
reaching  to  be  commensurate  with  his  eternal  interests. 


XIV 

The    moral    order    must   be  referred   to  a   spiritual 
source,  and  whatever  its  contrary  aspects,   those  are 
such  as  characterise  any  order  when  seen  in  the  light  of 
its  central  principle.     Regarded  as  a  whole, 
Progress  de-  the  iHOfal  Order  is  that  cycle  of  human  experi- 
Spirituai     ^iice  which,  beginning  in   a  flesh-and-blood  kin- 
Growth.     ship,  is  completed  in  a  kinship  which  embraces 
the  universe.     Whatever  it  may  seem  to  be  in  any  part 
of  the  cycle,  it  must  in  its  totality  be  the  outward  ex- 
pression of  man's  spiritual  destiny.     Conducted  to  its 
completeness  by  any  rational  plan  or  by  rules  derived 
from  experience,  it  would  be  as  remote  from  the  King- 
dom of   Heaven  as  is  the  embodiment  of  Confucian 
ethics  in  the  Chinese  social  system  ;  but  if  we  conceive 
the  psychical  progress  of  man  to  include  his  spiritual 
growth  in  that  garden  of  which  the  Father  of  Spirits  is 


THE  MORAL    ORDF.R  i8i 

the  husbandman,  and  to  be  in  its  largest  expression  a 
harmony  whose  centre  is  in  the  regenerate  heart  of  a 
divine  humanity,  then  must  this  progress  as  a  whole 
transcend  as  well  as  include  those  constructions  of 
human  will  and  reason  which  lie  within  the  limitations 
of  experience — must  indeed  so  far  transcend  these  as 
in  its  regeneration  to  be  a  repentance  thereof,  a  re- 
pentance beyond  all  the  natural  repentances  in  the 
series  of  creative  transformations,  bringing  in  the  new 
heavens  and  the  new  cartli  wherein  dwellcth  the  living 
righteousness. 

These  considerations  whicli,  in  so  far  as  they  are 
based  upon  a  Christian  philosophy,  more  properly  be- 
long to  a  subsequent  chapter,  are  here  introduced  as  a 
protest  against  the  identification  of  human  regenera- 
tion with  any  possible  outward  accomplishment  or  in- 
tegral completeness.  But  it  is  natural  and  consistent 
with  all  analogies  to  regard  man's  ps)'chical  progress 
as,  in  its  mightiest  reaction,  associated  with  liis  redemp- 
tion. 


XV 

Regarding  the  moral  order  as  grounded  in  a  spiritual 
principle,  we  see  the  working  of  tiiis  principle  in  what 
seems  most   arbitrary  and   conventional.      Our  plans 
and  charts  of  life  are  not  merely  subject  to 
revision,  but  they  become  parts  of  a  dissolv-  i he  Hidden 
ing  view,  the  material  world  itself  becoming 
spiritually  solvent.     We  cannot  but  fix  an  intent  and 
expectant  gaze   upon   the  objects  of  our  striving  ;  hut 
even  while  we  look  there  is  a  chance  like  that  wiiich 


i83  A  STUDY   OF  DEATH 

comes  in  dreams,  and  some  hidden  hope  is  answered 
that  is  often  contrary  to  the  conscious  expectation  and 
always  different.  There  is  a  real  world  nearer  and 
more  intimate  than  that  which  lies  next  to  our  eyes  or 
our  hands.  It  is  as  if  we  were  projecting  our  oppo- 
sites,  really  yielding  when  we  seem  to  resist,  and  releas- 
ing what  we  seem  to  seize,  some  deeper  dilection  con- 
tradicting the  apparent  choice  and  taking  the  evil 
which  we  outwardly  reject ;  so  that,  while  we  are  load- 
ing the  scapegoat  with  our  sins  to  bear  them  away  into 
the  wilderness,  there  is  something  within  us  that  takes 
sin  itself  into  that  ancient  confessional,  wherein  it  is 
conjoined  with  all  dark  mysteries  and  finds  its  recon- 
cilement with  the  eternal  life.  What  outwardly  seems 
weakness  and  shame  is  inwardly  glorified,  becoming  a 
part  of  the  creative  transformation  whereby  the  quick- 
ening spirit  moves  to  issues  registered,  indeed,  in  time, 
but  known  for  what  they  really  are  and  mean  only  in 
the  council-chamber  of  the  Eternal,  where  the  Son  is 
one  with  the  Father. 


CIIAl'TER    III 
ASCENT    AND    DESCENT   OF    LIFE 

T 

"Remember  now  thy  Creator*  in  the  days  of  thy 
youth,"  says  the  Preacher,  recognising  the  nearness  of 
youth  to  its  mystical  source,  as  if  in  the  as- 
cendent movement  of  the  fountain  it  might      peaih" 
feel  its  motion  ere  it  moved — as  if  through 
a  gate  not  yet  closed  it  had  some  vision  of  unwasted 
brightness  and  power. 

Wordsworth  associated  childhood  with  intimations 
of  immortality,  though,  as  presented  in  his  sublime  ode, 
these  intimations  are  those  of  an  Eternal  Life  rather 
than  of  immortality — the  native  sense  of  that  life  as  an 
unseen  ocean  whose  waves  are  heard  beating  upon 
the  shores  of  Time,  "  though  inland  far  we  be." 

In  the  scientific  view  birth  is  most  intimately  associ- 
ated with  death.  Thus,  in  the  series  of  creative  spe- 
cialisations, sex  appears  simultaneously  with  death. 
Reproduction  is  a  katabolic,  or  descending,  process  . 
the  matri.x  is  a  tomb,  from  wliich  Childhood  is  the 
resurrection.  The  highest  organisms  show  most  com- 
plex dying  as  well   as   most  complex   living;   and   in 

*  In  tlic  IIi;l)ri.w  llic  word  signifies  "  Well." 


184  A  STUDY   OF  DEATH 

every  physiological  operation  the  dying  lies  next  the 
living  process ;  thus  the  metabolism  goes  on,  nutri- 
tion turning  and  falling  into  secretion  and  secretion 
stimulating  nutrition. 

Looking  upon  birth  as  the  beginning  of  an  organ- 
ism, or  the  apparent  beginning,  and  upon  death  as  its 
apparent  conclusion,  then  the  whole  term  or  cycle  of 
its  visible  existence  is  the  interval  between  these ;  but 
the  extremes  which  we  thus  separate  in  thought  are  in 
every  living  moment  of  the  organism  brought  togeth- 
er. The  most  significant  fact  disclosed  by  recent 
embryological  research  is  the  intimate  connection  of 
death  with  birth.     Death  permits  birth. 

In  the  most  complex  forms  of  life  both  death  and 
birth  are  specialised  and  accentuated  and  are,  more- 
over, prolonged  and  elaborate  periods.  In  certain 
species,  between  the  lowest  and  highest,  the  death  of 
the  parent  seems  to  be  the  immediate  sequel  of  the 
parental  function,  thus  conspicuously  emphasising  the 
katabolic  or  mortal  characteristic  of  the  reproductive 
process. 

II 

The  earth,  before  it  could  be  the  dwelling-place  of 
man  (of  man  as  we  know  him)  had  come  into  a  state 
of  suspense  and  temperament,  wherein  her  veiled  poten- 
cies had  a  novel  and  varied  manifestation — 

Specific     the  cosmic  habit  and  constitution  of  a  plan- 
Preparation 
for  Ascent    et,  showing  what  would  almost  seem  a  new 

of  Organisms,  j^.^^    ^^  ^^^^^^        ^^  ^^^  ^^^^^^  ^j  j^^^  ^jgj^j^ 

bringing  her  into  her  destined   orbit,  disclosed  grav- 


/ISCF.NT  AND  DFSCF.NT  OF  LIFF  185 

ily,  so  the  hiding  of  her  heat  permitted  the  molar  at- 
traction to  enter  into  a  free  play  of  molecular  afTinities 
hitherto  latent  in  the  primal  expansion  and  tension. 
The  heat  radiated  from  the  contracting  sphere  is  spe- 
cific ;  indeed,  all  the  energies  manifest  in  this  ultimate 
constitution  of  matter  have  a  microcosmic  specialty, 
and  in  their  planetary  transmutation  are  released  for 
new  tensions,  diversely,  multiformly,  and  minutely  ex- 
pressing the  old  theme  in  temperate  and  discrete  ar- 
ticulation. It  is  as  if  what  Plato,  thinking  of  the  ge- 
neric, meant  in  his  conception  of  Ideas  had  become 
species,  diversified  in  bewildering  variety,  especially  in 
organic  existence.  The  very  distance  of  the  planet 
from  the  sun  seems  to  permit  this  free  play  of  life 
upon  its  surface,  as  the  departure  of  heat  from  water 
permits  crystallisation,  or  as  the  arrest  of  nutrition 
brings  fruit  and  seed. 

In  this  complex  hierarchy  of  Nature  discrete  accords 
are  sustained,  so  that  they  fall  not  into  indifference 
and  confusion  ;  degrees  of  excellence  are  marked — of 
truth,  beauty,  and  goodness  ;  individual  sequestration 
and  tranquillity  are  secured,  and  for  each  life  a  way — 
its  own  that  no  other  can  take,  and  yet  open  to  ac- 
cordant intimacies  and  correspondences  -,  and  in  the 
psychical  involvement  life  acquires  a  feeling  of  itself 
and  a  conscious  control,  the  liberty  of  its  dwelling. 
Everything  becomes  special — birth,  existence,  death, 
providence  itself.  Space  and  Time  are  but  the  room 
allowed  for  tiie  play  of  action  and  interaction  within 
an  appreciable  scope,  and  the  varied  seasons  tlirough 
which  all  things  pass  in  their  limited  cycles.  I'or  all 
living   things    repose,  like  work,  is  special,  giving  to 


1 86  A  STUDY  OF  DEATH 

night  and  sleep  and  oblivion — to  all  kinds  of  release 
— peculiar  and  grateful  meanings. 

Moreover,  in  this  ultimate  constitution  of  matter,  we 
note  a  special  latency  of  forces,  a  vis  mertice  of  the  ele- 
ments— terrestrial  insignia  of  the  primal  potency.  Ele- 
ments which  readily  combine  at  ordinary  temperatures 
are  set  far  apart.  Thus  it  is  said  that  there  is  iron 
enough  hidden  within  the  earth  to  wholly  deprive  the 
atmosphere  of  its  oxygen  if  it  were  all  exposed  at  the 
surface.  Receptacles  are  provided  for  storage  and 
immunity,  and  walls  for  protection.  In  living  organ- 
isms vitality  includes  the  physical  and  chemical  pro- 
cesses, holding  them  in  suspense  for  its  own  ascent  or 
allowing  their  disclosure  in  its  descent,  just  as  the  ex- 
pansive power  which  we  call  the  centrifugal  force  in 
the  solar  system  includes  and  veils  gravitation  until 
the  limit  of  expansion  is  reached,  when  the  reaction  is 
disclosed. 

At  the  last  point  of  descent  in  the  specialisation  of 
inorganic  matter,  which  we  call  dead — at  the  point  of 
barrenness,  appears  the  plasma  of  ascending  organisms. 
Science  for  the  explication  of  undulations  or  waves  of 
energy  (the  forces  themselves  which  we  call  heat,  elec- 
tricity, etc.,  being  diversified  according  to  wave-lengths) 
postulates  the  ether  as  a  vibratory  medium  pervading 
all  matter — the  atoms  of  matter  being  vortical  motions 
of  this  ether.  These  vortical  motions  are  likened  to 
smoke-wreaths,  versions  which  are  at  the  same  time 
introversions  or  retroversions.  We  would  prefer  to  say 
that  life  pervades  the  universe,  and  to  designate  these 
motions  of  the  ether  as  the  tropic  action  and  reaction 
proper  to  life  itself — an  evolution  which  is  at  the  same 


ASCENT  AND  DESCENT  OF  LIFE  187 

time  involution.  For  whatever  we  may  interpose  be- 
tween the  phenomenal  world  and  its  Creator — whether 
it  be  the  absolute  of  abstract  metaphysics  or  the  ether 
of  physical  science — the  medium  itself  demands  expli- 
cation, and  we  must  in  the  end  confront  the  mystery  of 
the  Eternal  Life.  In  the  organic  plasma,  then — in  this 
nucleus  of  a  universe  which,  seen  by  us  as  ascending 
(since  we  are  a  part  of  the  ascension),  we  are  willing  to 
call  living — there  is  the  action  and  reaction  of  life. 
We  may  think  of  these  as  internal  motions,  represent- 
ing them  through  such  images  as  to  our  limited  under- 
standing seem  most  adequate  for  their  expression  ;  but 
the  only  real  apprehension  of  them  we  can  ever  have 
is  through  their  own  expression  in  living  manifestation. 

If  we  consider  this  protoplasm  as  a  material  sub- 
stance having  certain  properties  and  certain  chemical 
constituents  ^///s  vitality;  if  we  think  of  it  as  an  in- 
volute in  which  all  forms  of  vegetable  and  animal  life 
are  held  latently  and  implicitly,  awaiting  the  stimulus 
of  environment  for  their  evolution  and  taking  such  di- 
verse shapes  and  functions  as  may  be  determined  by 
mechanical  and  chemical  resistances  and  pressures,  we 
reckon  without  our  host.  For  this  substance  in  its 
apparent  homogeneity  and  indilTerence  does  not  more 
completely  obscure  its  possible  issues  than  it  veils  the 
unseen  spirit  unto  which  it  is  pKistic.  It  is  because  of 
its  apparent  simplicity,  insignificance,  and  characterless- 
ness that  it  is  susceptible  to  the  infinite  potency  of  the 
abounding  life  which  is  to  become  tiie  finite  fulness 
and  variety — of  that  same  abounding  life  which  gives 
the  ether  its  pulsation. 

This  protoplasm,  as  already  intimated,  lies  next  an 


i88  A  STUDY  OF  DEATH 

utter  barrenness  in  the  inorganic  world — next  the  win- 
ter-like stillness  and  calm  severity  of  natural  elements 
and  forces  hushed  and  checked  for  some  singular  Na- 
tivity. All  the  travail  and  prodigal  expenditure  of 
Nature,  all  her  gracious  descents  await  here  in  peace- 
ful silence  to  catch  the  whispered  longings  of  a  new 
Desire,  which  shall  call  for  further  and  more  special 
ministrations. 

Ill 

We  have  noted  that  in  organic  specialisation  there  is 
a  physiological  insphering,  incavations  for  the  recep- 
tion into  the  organism  itself  of  this  descending  minis- 
tration of  Nature,  hungry  receptacles  which 
vouTdon-'a  ^^^  ^^  once  tombs  of  decay  and  matrices  of 
Capacity     jjfg — t^g  dving  being  thus  intimately  brought 

for  Death.  ^    ,^.  ^  ^  .  ^  ^ 

next  to  the  living.  The  life  of  the  organism 
demands  the  sacrifice  -,  it  not  only  includes  death,  ever 
multiplying  and  deepening  its  capacity  therefor,  but 
gives  it  a  physiological  character  as  distinguished  from 
merely  chemical  disintegration,  so  that  the  descent 
conforms  to  the  physiological  ascent  which  it  promotes. 
Moreover,  each  part  of  the  organism  thus  nourished 
suffers  disintegration  for  its  own  functioning,  and  even 
during  a  certain  period  gains  structural  strength  through 
this  intimacy  with  death.  The  waves  of  psychical  as- 
cent in  like  manner  rise  next  to  the  quick  deaths  of 
the  brain.  Capacity  and  involution  are  for  ascent ; 
faculty,  function,  all  evolution,  for  descent.  The  com- 
plete physiological  term  for  each  organism  is  a  cycle  the 
curvature  of  which  is  determined  by  the  limit  of  capacity. 


^SLhNT  .-I NO   nrSCHNT  OF  /.IFF  189 


IV 

When  Euripides  said  that  what  we  call  living  is 
really  dying,  he  expressed  a  truth  as  scientific  as  it 
is  poetic.  What  is  it  that  we  especially  call  living  ? 
Is  it  notour  complex  functioning,  our  development  in- 
dividually and  socially,  something  associ- 
ated with  our  waking  hours  rather  than  with  *^"ny|,'|g"^ 
those  of  sleep,  with  the  expenditure  of  en- 
ergies rather  than  with  their  expansion  and  absorption, 
with  the  exercise  of  trained  faculties,  with  active  hero- 
ism and  passionate  romance,  with  the  contests  in  the 
arena,  rather  than  with  the  crudeness  of  infancy,  the 
dependency  of  pupilage,  the  inly-folded  dreams  of 
youth  that  give  no  outward  sign,  and  the  mimic  con- 
flicts of  the  gymnasium  and  pala;stra  ?  Rut  wakefulness 
is  mortal  exhaustion — functioning  is  a  release  of  ten- 
sion, like  that  of  a  watch  which  serves  as  time-keeper 
only  when  it  is  "running  down."  No  work  is  done 
save  by  bodies  that  fall  or  in  some  way  give  up  poten- 
tial energy ;  all  development  or  unfolding — what  we 
call  evolution — is  a  descent.  We  know  the  tree  by  its 
fruits,  but  inflorescence  and  fruition,  beginning  from 
arrested  nutrition,  belong  to  the  falling  life,  to  its  dim- 
inution. 

Expression,  all  definite  and  visible  manifestation,  is 
a  witnessing — a  martyrdom.  Evaporation  becomes  in- 
visible, but  we  see  the  descending  rain,  the  flowing 
stream,  the  crystalline  ice  :  contraction,  solidification, 
and  fixity  of  structure  show  the  degrees  of  falling.  In 
the  material  world  these  processes  of  descent  are  most 


IQO  A  STUDY  OF  DEATH 

in  evidence ;  and  their  precipitate — what  is  known  to 
us  as  dead  matter — is  an  ever-present  object  of  vision 
and  touch,  inert,  resistant.  Therefore  it  is  that  gravi- 
tation, which  is  the  physical  symbol  of  death,  seems  to 
us  the  prime  universal  force,  and  weight  is  made  the 
measure  of  value  to  the  disparagement  of  levity,  being 
associated  also  with  importance  and  impressiveness. 
The  root  of  the  Hebrew  word  for  glory  signifies  heavi- 
ness. Solidity  and  stability  bear  down  upon  us  with 
a  like  emphasis  of  force  and  pressure,  becoming  also 
the  basis  of  confidence  and  firm  support.  So  Death 
which  draws  us  down  becomes  a  prop  against  descent, 
the  means  of  protection  and  fortification  against  his 
ruinous  assault. 

Mechanical  work,  like  the  functioning  of  living  or- 
ganisms, is  made  to  depend  upon  this  "dying  fall." 
We  accumulate  gravitation  by  damming  a  stream,  bar- 
ring and  accumulating  its  gravity,  and  then  permit  its 
operation  as  a  driving  force.  We  confine  the  tension  of 
steam  and  then  release  it,  regulating  the  escapement 
to  suit  our  purpose.  We  even  imitate  the  organic 
stimulation  of  nutrition  through  waste,  as  in  the  electric 
dynamo  the  reinforcement  of  the  tension  is  increased 
by  the  larger  outlet  in  expenditure. 

The  record  of  human  history  is  a  Book  of  Martyrs ; 
the  vista  is  lined  with  ruins.  The  beginnings  of  all 
races  are  lost  to  view.  The  biographer  of  eminent 
men  searches  in  vain  for  traces  of  the  child  that  is 
"father  to  the  man."  Our  own  first  years  are  hidden 
in  oblivion.  The  fountain  of  youth  eludes  discovery, 
escaping  even  contemporaneous  observation.  Our 
present  is  known  to  us  only  as  it  passes.     Thought, 


/1SCENT  y4ND  DESCENT  Oh   LIFE  iQi 

rcc;arclecl  as  a  definite  manifestation,  is  a  precipitate  ; 
and  the  formed  mental  structure,  like  the  formed  moral 
cliaracter,  is  a  mortal  framework  that  needs  support 
against  its  tendency  to  flxU,  as  does  any  material  edi- 
fice ;  indeed  the  time  inevitably  comes  for  its  maturity, 
induration,  fragility,  and  ruin  —  a  season  of  autumn, 
postponed  only,  like  the  decay  of  the  body,  by  nutrition 
and  the  stimulus  of  expenditure. 

Death  is,  then,  so  inseparable  from  life  that  we  speak 
of  one  in  terms  of  the  other  ;  and  in  an  external  and 
objective  view  we  must  think  of  all  action  in  an  em- 
bodiment as  finally  taking  upon  itself  the  appearance 
of  decrepitude  and  diminution — the  original  potency 
lost  in  impotence.  In  this  view  every  embodiment  is 
a  prison-house,  gradually  closing  in  upon  life  with  an 
absurd  conclusion. 


In  reality,  the  involution  is  the  tension  and  confine- 
ment, and  development  the  graduated   release.      An 
invisible   reaction   in  the  ascending  movement   deter- 
mines the  limitation  of  every  organism  after 
its  type — that  is  to  say,  in  its  special  accord   ^""actfon"* 
as  part  of  the  cosmic  harmony.    It  is  a  bond 
in  the  expansion  and  fixes  the  bounds  apparent  in  the 
development ;  it  controls  the  method  and  defines  the 
shape ;  it  establishes  the  curvature  of  the  cycle  com- 
pleted in   descending  processes  of  evolution.     Thus 
reaction  seems  to  dominate  action — hidden  in  ascent 
and   conspicuous   in   descent.     The  smaller  cycles  of 
activity  illustrate  this  domination  of  reaction  as  does 


192  A  STUDY  OF  DEATH 

the  full  term  including  them.  Thus  every  expert  vocal- 
ist knows  that  inspiration  controls  expiration.  The  elas- 
ticity is  in  the  inbreathing,  the  withdrawal,  the  rebound, 
the  undoing  (as  in  sleep),  the  moment  of  the  heart's  re- 
pose— always  the  vanishing  side,  as  into  creative  void. 
Invisibly,  or  subjectively,  the  limitation  is  the  seal  and 
commission  of  power,  but  objectively,  as  seen  in  struct- 
ure, it  is  a  barrier  —  the  sign  of  that  impotence  into 
which  it  descends ;  and  it  is  in  this  outward  view  that 
the  confinement  oppresses  or  harasses  and  seems  like 
an  entanglement  full  of  hard  knots  that  make  us  quer- 
ulous and  beget  in  us  miserable  solicitudes.  Here  it 
is,  and  associated  with  the  sense  of  imprisonment,  that 
problems  arise  to  vex  our  souls,  concerning  life  itself — 
that  life  which  transcends  the  prison  and  yet  so  seems 
to  belie  and  contradict  itself  within  the  narrow  hedge- 
ment.  Thus  our  queries  about  a  future  life  take  their 
very  form  and  color  from  our  cloistral  structure — like 
those  which  the  Sadducees,  who  believed  not  in  the 
Resurrection,  put  to  our  Lord.  We  are  apt,  like  the 
Sadducees,  to  ignore  the  peculiar  conditions  of  our 
confinement,  and  most  of  all  the  fact  that  it  is  spon- 
taneously determined  by  Life  itself — by  our  own  in- 
most and  essential  life,  which  is  one  with  the  Logos 
from  the  beginning.  Our  distorted  views  of  the  pres- 
ent as  well  as  of  a  future  life  arise  from  this  ignorance, 
which,  as  in  the  case  of  the  Sadducees,  is  radically  a 
lack  of  faith  in  Life's  proper  reaction — its  resurgence, 
since  the  reaction  is  an  ascent  completed  in  descent, 
a  flight  completed  in  return,  a  repulsion  finally  dis- 
closed as  attraction. 

Concentrating  our  attention  upon  the  visible  world. 


ASCENT  AND  DESCENT  OF  LIFE  193 

upon  human  development  regarded  externally,  in  re- 
lation to  its  environment,  we  are  lost.  Life's  own  in- 
sistence upon  its  limitation  is  so  sure  that  it  controls 
every  form  of  thought  and  action.  The  closure  is  ef- 
fective. The  limitation  is  special,  as  if  holding  us  to 
the  key-note  of  a  particular  harmony.  The  protoplas- 
mic basis  of  organic  life  is  itself  to  a  definite  extent 
specialised,  being  a  composite  of  nitrogen,  carbon,  hy- 
drogen, oxygen,  and  sulphur  —  plastic  to  the  vitality 
which  is  to  give  it  embodiment  and  meaning.  The 
variety  of  the  types  developed  is  a  diversification  of  the 
organic  harmony,  but  the  most  advanced  organisms  be- 
fore at  birth  they  emerge,  each  upon  its  own  particular 
strain,  must  rise  from  the  basic  note,  recapitulating 
ante-natally  every  variation  of  the  entire  gamut,  each 
clothing  itself  in  one  singing-robe  after  another  until  it 
is  habilitated  for  its  proper  song.  This  recapitulation 
is  a  successive  involution  rather  than  an  evolution,  no 
special  development  being  allowed  until  the  ultimate 
stage  is  reached. 

Our  present  existence  is  not  only  an  allotment  in 
time  and  space,  but  a  special  allotment ;  every  embodi- 
ment being  a  peculiar  sequestration  with  tU  and  com- 
plementary environment.  If  we  could  see  the  entire 
synthesis  in  all  its  correspondences,  the  attunement 
would  be  manifest,  and  we  would  not  tiiink  of  one  part 
as  acting  upon  another,  but  of  all  as  a  living  sym- 
[)hony. 


194  ^  STUDY  OF  DEATH 


VI 

In  an  inclusion  so  insulated  (in  order  that  an  organ- 
ism may  have,  in  any  proper  sense,  individuality),  so 
special,  and  so  complex,  it  is  inevitable  that  illusions 
must  arise,  enhancing  the  delights  and  deepening  the 
anxieties  and  sorrows  of  the  human  pilgrim- 

Mental      ^  ^y^  havc  considered  these  illusions  in 

Inversions.        » 

a  general  way,  but  we  desire  here  to  show 
how  directly  they  are  associated  with  a  definite  term  or 
cycle  of  existence,  and  especially  with  the  apparent  im- 
potence of  its  conclusion.  In  this  connection  they 
dominate  our  emotional  and  intellectual  life,  and  they 
do  this  by  a  projection  which  is  an  inversion  of  the  liv- 
ing truth.  This  inversion  begins  with  integration  itself. 
That  reaction  which  is  in  the  expanding  and  ascending 
life,  and  by  which  it  becomes  an  involution,  we  project 
as  an  external  limitation.  Time  and  space,  which  are 
only  the  forms  of  our  thought,  we  project  outside  of  our- 
selves, as  if  we  were  in  them  and  not  they  in  us.  Re- 
sistance, which  is  inherent  in  repulsion,  we  attribute  to 
outward  objects.  Control  or  restraint,  essentially  sub- 
jective, we  regard  as  pressure  or  urgency  from  without. 
What  is  merely  concomitant  or  complementary  in  our 
environment  becomes  in  our  thought  the  cause  of 
states  in  us.  We  say  we  love  what  is  lovable,  whereas 
nothing  is  lovable  save  through  our  loving.  We  think 
of  matter  as  eternal  and  of  ourselves  as  having  begun 
at  birth — of  vitality  itself  as  something  permitted  for 
a  brief  period  by  suitable  conditions  of  the  elements. 
We  say  that  life  depends  upon  structure,  and  are  anx- 


ASCENT  AND  DESCENT  OF  LIFE  195 

ious  as  to  means  of  its  sustentation.  During  a  portion 
of  our  brief  cycle  we  grow  in  stature  and  strength  and 
knowledge,  and  in  the  full  enjoyment  of  our  heritage 
and  the  widening  of  our  perspective  it  seems  as  if  life 
were  overflowing  its  bounds,  and  we  think  of  ourselves 
as  nourished  and  filled  from  some  fund  provided  for 
this  plenitude  ;  then  waste  gains  upon  repair,  and  the 
wide  fields  grow  dim  and  gray — when  it  seems  to  us 
as  if  we  were  defrauded  of  all  the  wealth  bestowed 
upon  us,  until  at  last  we  are  reduced  to  nakedness 
and  pass  into  the  world  of  shadows.  But,  in  reality, 
the  diminution,  like  the  increase,  is  subjectively  deter- 
mined ;  both  are  the  visible  signs  of  the  imageless  re- 
action of  Life,  which  itself  can  be  neither  increased  nor 
diminished. 


VII 

In  the  phenomenal  world,  as  we  know  it,  the  appar- 
ent diminution  of  potential  energy  begins  with  the  spe- 
cialisation of  existence,  with  the  divided  living:  it  is 
the  sign  of  every  beginning  as  of  every  ending,  and  is 
more  evident  at  every  successive  involution, 
as   in   every  individual  organism   it   is  con-    Limitation 
spicuous  in  its  special  development.     It  is 
the  sign  of  advance  in  the  order,  in  the  species,  in  the 
individual  ;  but  because  we  are  so  sensible  of  it  as  a 
barrier,  in  that  conclusion  of  a  term  of  existence  which 
we  ordinarily  call  death,  we  associate  it  with  weakness 
and  decrepitude,  with  the  manifest  impotence,  forget- 
tiiiL;  that  the  so  patent  blank  wall  which  then  closes 
ill  about  us  beiian  its  closure  with  our  first  moment. 


196  A  STUDY  OF  DEATH 

Death  which  at  last  seems  an  intruder  is  in  reality, 
and  in  so  far  as  we  have  part  in  it,  what  it  was  at  our 
first  germination  and  what  it  has  been  all  along — the 
master  inspiration,  our  nourishment,  the  storage  of  our 
increase,  our  habilitation  and  restoration.  The  masque 
he  wears  as  last  he  looks  upon  us  belies  his  mighty 
office  which  he  invisibly  performs,  clothing  anew  that 
which  he  divests,  bringing  to  resurgence  that  which 
he  seems  to  seal  in  with  the  outward  hardness  of  stone. 
Outwardly  we  note  the  final  encroachment ;  inwardly 
it  is  our  withdrawal,  the  vanishing  curve  of  our  brief 
cycle,  a  yielding  to  earthly  elements  as  soft  as  our  first 
seizure  upon  them— a  yielding  which  is  our  release, 
such  as  we  have  so  often  had  in  sleep. 


VIII 

The  sense  of  independence  on  the  part  of  an  indi- 
vidual organism  is  as  illusive  as  that  of  dependence. 
The  harmony  of  the  world,  including  humanity,  con- 
sists through   a  relation  which  is  complementary  and 
not  causal.    The  strains  blend  without  confu- 
Our  Cosmic  ^j^j^^     ^j^^  interaction  between  the  animal 

Partners. 

and  vegetable  kingdoms  illustrates  this  blend- 
ing, as  if  there  were  oneness  of  action  rather  than  in- 
teraction. It  is  impossible,  therefore,  to  overestimate 
the  importance  of  environment.  Human  action  is  thus 
conjoined  with  cosmic  operation  indissolubly  and  in 
an  everlasting  partnership.  This  is  as  true  of  psychical 
as  of  physiological  manifestation,  what  we  know  as 
thought  having  its  physical  side.     The  cosmic  comple- 


/1SCF.NT  AND  DFSCF.NT  OF  I. IFF  197 

ment  has  its  own  reactions,  apparent  to  us,  indeed,  only 
in  sucii  investiture  as  we  give  them,  yet  inseparably  in- 
terwoven with  that  investiture — as  external  vibrations 
are  with  our  hearing  and  seeing.  In  the  ascent  of  life, 
desire  seems  to  compel  its  cosmic  partner,  as  hunger 
its  victim,  suspending  that  operation  of  physical  and 
ciiemical  forces  proper  to  them  outside  of  this  dominion 
of  vitality ;  in  its  descent  these  forces  more  and  more 
tend  to  resume  their  proper  action,  until  finally  they 
bring  into  their  own  domain  the  structure  they  have 
served  ;  their  hardening  of  the  walls  of  life's  outward 
temple,  begun  for  protection,  has  gone  on  to  the  ex- 
treme of  fragility  and  destruction — an  office  as  kindly 
as  any  they  have  performed.  It  is  a  partnership  to  the 
very  end,  for  while  essential  life  can  suffer  no  diminu- 
tion, yet  the  individual  living  organism  declines,  the 
declension  being  a  part  of  its  self-imposed  limitation, 
and  to  this  falling  the  cosmic  forces  lean  as  readily  as 
to  the  rising — soon  themselves  to  be  freed  from  their 
loving  service,  as  is  Ariel  when  his  master  escapes  the 
island  seclusion.  The  partnership  is  continued  through 
successive  generations  of  humanity.  The  descent  of 
the  individual  has,  in  its  service  of  the  new  generation, 
the  aspect  of  a  sacrifice  in  whose  consummation  Nature 
officiates  as  high  priest,  burning  upon  altars  firmly  built 
the  last  dry  sheaves  of  the  harvest.  For  the  passing 
generation  her  work  seems  here  to  reach  its  con- 
clusion ;  but  she  also  will  have  her  transmutations, 
and  meet  on  new  terms  these  vanished  souls.  The 
descent  began  in  the  service  of  new  life  and  was  con- 
tinued in  that  service;  its  completion  is  for  its  own 
invisible    asccnsif)n,  as   tiie    stream,    serving    while    it 


198  A   STUDY   OF  DEATH 

falls,  disappears  only  to  be  caught  up  by  the  sun  to 
its  hidden  fountains  in  the  sky. 


IX 

The  integration  of  the  individual  life  is  a  tension,  an 
involution,  a  reaction  and  limitation.  In  its  very  ex- 
pansion it  becomes  an  inclusion  and  confinement,  in- 
sisting upon  the  partial,  the  divided  living, 
through  Limi-  at  whatcvcr  loss  and  exclusion.  The  sim- 
plest and  most  plastic  organisms  are  incon- 
ceivably more  potent  than  the  most  advanced  and  com- 
plex, the  latter  also  having  the  greatest  potency  before 
germination,  before  they  are  aware  of  living.  Blind 
feeling  is  sensitive  to  vibrations  from  which  specialised 
sensation  is  excluded,  and  chemical  processes  depend 
upon  solar  rays  more  powerful  than  those  to  which  any 
developed  organism  is  sensible.  Kinetic  energy  is  patent 
through  the  latency  of  the  potential.  Thus  the  inclu- 
sion becomes  an  ever  vaster  exclusion,  as  if  life  ad- 
vanced through  the  recession  of  its  powers,  getting  its 
values  through  distance,  holding  its  revels  aloof  from 
its  central  fires,  distilling  its  dews  ujjon  the  cool  hard 
surface  from  which  the  sun  has  fled.  The  story  of  life 
is  from  the  beginning  one  of  abnegation.  Man  in  his 
psychical  progress  largely  surrenders  the  instinct  com- 
mon to  all  other  animals,  thus  limiting  his  knowledge, 
confining  it  to  slow  and  definite  processes  of  accumu- 
lation— limiting  his  action  also  within  the  scope  of  de- 
sign and  invention.  He  seems  a  mere  nothing  in  the 
immensity  of  space,  and  the  whole  cycle  of  his  earthly 


ASCENT  /tND  DFSCENT  OF  LIFE  199 

history  but  a  moment  in  the  world's  time  ;  his  work 
upon  the  eartli  is  like  writing  upon  the  sands  soon  to 
be  obliterated,  and  his  conscious  correspondences  with 
the  universe  are  but  flashes  of  light  in  the  vast  dark- 
ness. Of  the  complex  synthesis  in  time  to  which,  in 
his  present  state,  he  belongs  he  knows  very  little,  and 
of  any  other  absolutely  nothing.  Least  of  all  does  he 
know  himself — what  was  his  being  before  he  appeared 
in  his  present  form,  what  it  shall  be  when  he  is  divested 
of  that  form,  or  even  what  it  is  now  in  the  depths 
whose  movements  are  not  registered  in  his  conscious- 
ness, certainly  not  registered  so  that  he  may  take  note 
of  the  index.  Indeed,  the  full  knowledge  of  any  living 
reality  would  operate  like  the  coming  of  Zeus  to  Semele, 
shattering  his  intelligence.  Life  so  turns  upon  itself, 
in  its  tropical  reaction,  that  the  very  terms  of  his  knowl- 
edge change  into  their  opposites.  While  he  stead- 
fastly gazes  upon  red  it  becomes  green.  He  can  make 
no  assertion  which  he  must  not  come  to  deny,  and  no 
denial  that  in  its  own  completion  shall  not  be  confes- 
sion. The  trope  makes  the  terms,  and  makes  them 
those  of  a  paradox. 

But  the  loss  is  for  gain;  the  more  partial  is  the  more 
complex,  the  divided  living  the  field  of  multiplicity  and 
variety,  what  is  mercifully  excluded  therefrom  permit- 
ting the  express  and  manifold  excellence  of  the  virtue 
and  beauty  and  truth  of  our  human  life;  and  as  the  con- 
tracting rocky  crust  of  the  earth  is  covered  with  tender 
and  luxuriant  growth,  so  man,  ever  at  the  surface  of 
things,  has  there  the  open  and  extended  view, 

"  Tlie  harvest  of  the  quiet  eye," 


200  A  STUDY   OF  DEATH 

the  subdued  melody  of  earth's  voices,  vast  and  intimate 
communicability  with  things  and  forces  tempered  and 
brought  near,  and  the  exquisite  sensibility  and  motion 
of  the  soft  flesh  that  covers  his  vertebrate  frame,  even  as 
this  hard  structure  veils  the  inmost  plasticity  of  his  in- 
carnation. The  social  plexus,  too,  above  the  tenacious 
fabric  of  its  unyielding  laws,  has  the  play  of  its  gra- 
cious amenities,  warm  sympathies,  and  gentle  charities. 
The  psychical  development  relieves  its  own  inflexible 
logic  with  the  poetic  dream  and  all  the  airy  forms 
created  by  the  imagination;  and  religious  faith  rises 
above  its  firmament  of  creeds,  transmuting  the  con- 
ditions of  divine  justice  into  the  intimacies  of  a  mys- 
tical incarnation,  wherein  it  has  a  new  motion  and  sen- 
sibility— the  plasticity  of  a  new  principle,  the  oldest 
of  all,  hidden  from  the  foundation  of  the  world,  the 
eternal  kinship.  Thus  the  organic  kingdom,  ending 
in  man,  is  the  reflection  of  the  whole  cosmic  cycle  back 
to  God.  It  is  a  fleeting  season,  but  it  is  the  world's 
summer,  whose  express  glory  is  due  to  the  veiling  of 
potential  energy,  every  new  limitation  and  hiding  of 
life  being  a  fresh  and  more  marvellous  manifestation 
of  its  creative  power. 


X 

It  is  a  glory  that  must  pass,  known  only  as  it  passes. 
That  defect,  or  what  we  deem  defect,  in  all  manifesta- 
tion from  the  beginning,  which  has  led   so 
Radical      iT^^ny  minds  to  associate  matter  with  diabo- 
lism—that  disturbance   of   equilibrium    by 
which  motion  is  possible,  so  that  the  wheel  of  life  may 


ASCENT  AND   DFSCENT  OF  LIFE  201 

turn — that  slight  friction  which,  for  tlie  same  possibil- 
ity, science  postulates  as  an  attribute  of  the  ether,  itself 
the  elasticity  of  all  tension  ;  all  these  are  but  other 
designations  for  that  tropic  reaction  of  life,  determin- 
ing every  specialised  manifestation,  hidden  in  ascent, 
expansion,  and  increase,  and  disclosed  in  contraction 
and  descent.  Urahnia  becomes  \'ishnu,  the  Preserver, 
and  then  Siva,  the  Destroyer.  This  trope  is  ever 
present  to  the  mind  of  the  Preacher:  the  crookedness 
that  cannot  be  made  straight,  a  wanting  that  cannot  be 
numbered,  the  one  event  that  happeneth  to  all,  the 
great  evil  under  the  sun.  "To  everything  there  is  a 
season  ...  a  time  to  be  born  and  a  time  to  die  ;  a  time 
to  plant  and  a  time  to  pluck  up  that  which  is  planted; 
...  a  time  to  get  and  a  time  to  lose  ;  a  time  to  keep  and 
a  time  to  cast  away."  Looking  toward  the  inevitable 
end,  the  view  becomes  pessimistic:  the  limitation  sug- 
gests weakness,  malady,  and  corruption,  and  in  human 
life  is  associated  with  a  deeper  frailty,  the  taint  of 
souls,  the  lapse  unutterable  into  the  bottomless  pit. 
"To  be  weak  is  miserable,"  and  this  weakness,  this 
goal  of  impotence  so  apparent  in  old  age,  when  de- 
sire fails  and  the  grasshopper  becomes  a  burden,  so 
seems  to  set  vanity  at  the  end  of  things  that  we 
wonder,  in  our  philosophic  musings,  why  we  should 
take  such  pains  to  set  straight  any  crookedness,  to 
build  up  and  buttress  structures  that  must  so  surely 
fall,  why.  indeed,  our  cup  is  filled  with  sweets  that  must 
all  turn  bitter.  The  end  of  life  thus  reflects  its  gloom 
upon  the  whole  course,  especially  in  the  minds  of  those 
whose  hold  upon  existence  is  all  along  timid  and  feeble, 
and   in  those  ages  which  lack  faith  and  vitality  ;  and 


202  A  STUDY  OF  DEATH 

we  almost  envy  that  strong  desire  which  in  more  primi- 
tive times  led  men  to  believe  in  the  possibility  of  tak- 
ing into  another  life  their  earthly  possessions — wealth, 
wives,  and  servants — that  were  buried  or  burned  with 
their  bodies,  confident,  as  the  bees  in  making  honey 
for  their  winter,  that  somehow,  though  the  vase  of  life 
were  broken,  they  might  avail  of  its  precious  storage 
for  death's  hibernation.  Better  still  is  the  faith  in  life's 
resurgence,  for  new  increase,  thus  bringing  us  back  to 
the  fountain. 


XI 

The  weakness  and  pains  of  infancy  are  as  great  as 
those  of  age  :  the  latter  call  forth  more  of  commisera- 
tion, because  for  them  the  relief  is  wholly  invisible,  and 
is  not  ours  to  give;  the  former  appeal  to  our  helpful 
sympathy,  and  also  have  help  that  we  know 
not  of,  even  as  we  only  partially  comprehend 
their  magnitude.  The  mother  knows  her  own 
travail,  but  not  that  of  her  child,  who  never  in  his  con- 
scious life  will  undertake  a  labour  equal  to  that  he  must 
bear  before  he  is  born.  Within  what  a  brief  period 
does  he  repeat  from  the  simplest  of  organic  forms  ev- 
ery stage  of  a  development  that  has  taken  thousands 
of  years  within  its  scope  !  We  have  here  in  this  reca- 
pitulation, this  foreshortening  of  the  work  of  ages,  a 
hint  of  that  potential  energy  which  is  greatest  in  the 
least  specialised  forms  of  existence — open  to  the  Infi- 
nite. "My  substance  was  not  hid  from  Thee,  when  I 
was  made  in  secret,  and  curiously  wrought  in  the  low- 
est parts  of  the  earth.     Thine  eyes  did  see  my  sub- 


ASCENT  AND   D  ESC  I:  NT   Oh    /.IFF  203 

stance  yet  being  imperfect ;  and  in  Thy  book  all  my 
members  were  written,  which  in  continuance  were  fash- 
ioned when  as  yet  there  was  none  of  them." 

The  human  germ,  having  accomplished  its  ante-natal 
miracle,  is  brought  into  the  light  of  day  a  helpless  in- 
fant ;  but  though  seeming  a  mere  weakling,  it  has  still 
before  it  new  mountains  to  remove.  It  must  wholly 
vitalise  and  bring  under  control  its  plastic  embodi- 
ment; must  make  its  connections,  physically  and  men- 
tally, with  its  natural  and  human  environment ;  and,  in 
doing  this,  it  must  supplement  the  subtle  architecture 
of  its  brain,  here  again  repeating  in  a  brief  period  what 
centuries  have  done  for  its  ancestors.  It  cannot  in- 
herit thought  and  speech  or  any  experience ;  in  all 
these  it  must  begin  at  the  beginning,  and  yet  catch  up 
with  whatever  advance  has  been  made  by  its  kind. 
Very  little  of  this  inconceivable  burden  can  be  borne 
for  it  by  parents,  kindred,  or  teachers  —  subjectively, 
indeed,  naught  of  it;  in  arbitrary  symbolism  the  signs 
are  held  out  to  the  child,  but  the  latter  must  give  these 
their  significance.  The  invisible  power  of  life  which 
shaped  its  organism,  already  limited  and  veiled  by  that 
organism,  is  still  called  upon  to  perform  miracles.  Out- 
wardly there  is  no  sign  of  this  travail,  and  when  it  is 
greatest  the  child  is  nourished  with  milk,  and  spends 
most  of  its  time  in  sleep  ;  indeed,  the  tender  plasticity 
is  the  essential  condition  of  the  miracle. 


204  A  STUDY  OF  DEATH 


XII 


The  season  of  infancy  has  much  in  common  with 
that  of  age,  though  so  different  are  these  in  our 
thought  of  them.  The  burden  of  the  child  is  invisible, 
not  apparent  in  consciousness,  its  gravity  being  hid- 
den in  the  expansion  which  is  an  uplifting  tension  ;  in 
age  the  gravity  is  disclosed  and  shown  as  oppressive 
weight.  The  jaded  sensibility  of  age  toys  with  the 
objects  of  its  diminished  desire,  simulating  the  dalli- 
ance and  shy  coquetry  of  the  child's  first  contact  with 
the  world.  The  new  desire  has  pain,  as  the  old  has 
weariness,  and  we  see  the  children,  thrust  upon  this 
earthly  coast  as  by  the  impulse  of  a  tide  at 
Desire  begins  jj-g  ^qq^  ygf  crying  bccause  they  have  come, 

m  Aversion.  ^  j  j      o  j  ' 

and  seeming  to  question  if  they  will  stay. 
How  coyly  do  they  take  their  places  at  life's  feast,  as 
if  nibbling  at  some  possibly  treacherous  bait  with 
dainty  and  quickly  surfeited  appetite !  Never  does 
sweet  milk  sour  so  quickly  as  the  mother's  in  the  gorge 
of  her  nursling;  and  the  regurgitation  is  alike  promi- 
nent in  Shakespeare's  portrayal  of  the  infant  and  in 
Swedenborg's  vision  of  heavenly  innocents.  The  un- 
conscious desire,  with  its  sure  wisdom,  though  it  lacks 
the  eagerness  of  an  acquired  taste,  of  an  appetite  that 
has  grown  by  what  it  has  fed  on,  has  yet  a  hidden  vio- 
lence ;  but  because  the  sensibility  is  new  and  fresh,  its 
first  contacts  with  an  untried  world  are  attended  by 
pain  and  irritation  and  the  difficulty  of  crudeness,  as 
newly  awakened  eyes  suffer  the  dawn,  seeming  to  shun 
what  they  await.     The  bold  venture  is  outwardly  shy 


ASCENT  /1ND  DESCENT  Of'    LIEE  205 

and  full  of  a  play  in  which  repulsion  seems  primary 
rather  than  attraction.  The  seizure  begins  with  an 
open  hand  that  would  seem  about  to  put  aside  its 
object  before  grasping  it,  even  as  it  ends  in  relaxation, 
in  the  rejection  of  its  fulness. 

Thus,  though  childhood  is  so  postulant,  asking  for 
all  things,  yet  the  first  responses  to  its  prayers  are  ac- 
cepted with  an  averted  face,  as  of  those  who  are  leaving 
the  world  instead  of  those  who  are  taking  it — the  cur- 
vature of  departure  being  the  same  at  the  beginning  of 
the  cycle  as  at  the  end.  The  cup  of  life  has  no  more 
of  bitterness  in  its  dregs  than  there  is  in  its  first  relish. 

Novelty  excites  nausea  as  does  satiety ;  a  wholly 
new  sensation  or  situation  produces  a  kind  of  dizziness 
and  bewilderment.  The  taste  for  any  food,  as  well  as 
for  stimulants  and  narcotics,  must  be  acquired,  and  a 
different  zone  becomes  compatible  only  through  ac- 
climatisation. Precisely  this  arrangement  of  harmony 
which  we  enter  into  at  birth  has  never  been  ours  be- 
fore, and  there  is  a  sense  of  discord  at  first  and  the  at- 
tunement  is  gradual ;  a  chaotic  disturbance  precedes 
the  cosmic  agreeableness.  We  are  at  first  in  the  strange 
situation  of  the  blind  man  whose  sight  has  been  sud- 
denly restored — at  a  loss,  even  as  one  suddenly  deprived 
of  sight.  Hence  the  feeling  of  sane  restfulness  that 
comes  from  familiarity.  We  are  pilgrims  in  the  far 
country  and  must  be  naturalised.  We  observe,  if  we 
do  not  remember,  the  child's  timid  aversion  to  a  new- 
face  or  a  strange  garment,  and  in  the  beginning  all  out- 
ward shapes  are  rude  disguises — even  all  that  is  stim- 
ulant and  helpful  being  first  seen  as  hostile,  and  only 
slowly  disclosing  the  intimate  friendliness. 


2o6  A  STUDY  OF  DEATH 


XIII 


Pathology  begins  with  existence,  showing  the  as- 
pects of  malady  in  nascent  conditions,  as  might  be  ex- 
pected, since  the  seed  must  die  for  its  own  abundance. 
Our  physical  functioning  results  not  only  in 
thoioey^  wastc  but  in  the  actual  precipitation  of  a 
poison,  which  adds  malignancy  to  weariness. 
The  first  stage  of  nutrition  is  toxic,  the  stomach  produc- 
ing peptones,  whose  poison  is  eliminated  by  the  liver, 
itself  the  cause  of  sweetness  and  the  seat  of  melancholy. 
Even  medicine  relieves  disease  by  virtue  of  its  bitter- 
ness, and  by  every  moment  tasting  death  our  life  is 
forever  renewed,  while  we  smile  contempt  at  the  angel 
we  have  wrestled  with  for  his  blessing. 

Difificulty,  resistance,  disturbance,  pain — whatever 
names  we  give  to  the  limitation  upon  which  we  enter — 
belong  to  life,  to  its  proper  reaction  from  the  begin- 
ning, and  are  the  basis  of  a  normal  pathology.  Nas- 
cent and  renascent  life  is  in  the  line  of  resistance,  is  in 
its  expansion  aware  of  its  bond,  and  involves  disease. 
Comparing  its  repulsion  to  what  in  physics  we  call  the 
centrifugal  force,  we  think  of  it  as  resisted  by  attrac- 
tion and  as  thus  brought  into  flexion  ;  but,  really,  the 
repulsion  is  from  the  first  an  attraction,  and  so  a  flex- 
ion at  every  point  of  the  cycle,  or  vibration.  The  ex- 
pansion involves  the  tension,  and  therefore  it  is  that  it 
becomes  confinement. 

The  reaction  is  constant  through  the  whole  term  of 
existence — the  basis  of  endless  change  and  infinite 
variability ;  forever  interrupting  the  tendency  of  habit, 


ASCENT  AND  DHSCHNT  OF  LIFE  207 

which  is  toward  stabiHty,  uniformity,  and  facility,  and 
introducing  the  hostile,  alien  elements,  dissociable  for 
new  association.  For  every  sign  of  the  zodiac  there  is 
some  new  labor;  and  in  this  travail  all  outward  assist- 
ance involves  resistance.  The  latent  inward  potency 
is  outwardly  maintained  in  the  deepening  of  capacity, 
whose  tension  is  buoyant,  lifting  as  it  deepens.  Rut  in 
tile  aspiration  every  movement  is  a  spurning  of  what  it 
meets,  contempt  of  what  it  embraces,  and  though  life 
makes  terms  with  its  adversary  quickly, they  are  terms 
of  reconciliation  whose  first  and  last  import  is  one  of 
disdain.  We  turn  with  weariness  from  Day  to  Night, 
and  at  dawn  smite  with  rosy  arrows  the  breast  that  has 
renewed  our  strength.  The  children  turn  against  the 
parents,  truants  from  home  and  at  enmity  with  teachers 
and  nurses.  The  Lord  of  Life  brings  not  peace  but  a 
sword,''  setting  a  man  at  variance  against  his  father,  and 
a  daughter  against  her  mother,"  so  that  a  man's  foes 
shall  be  of  his  own  household.  Normal  like  abnormal 
pathology  has  its  shocks  and  chills,  its  fevers  and  its  an- 
gers— its  pool  of  Bethesda,  whose  waters  are  troubled  by 
the  Angel  of  Death,  who  is  invisibly  the  .Angel  of  Life. 
The  strongest  passion  of  animal  life  is  the  beginning 
of  physical  death,  and  we  are  not  wholly  amiss  in  call- 
ing its  first  appearance  a  '•  love-sickness,''  for  what  is 
there  so  full  of  pains  and  rages  and  fevers?  It  is  the 
first  note  of  command  issued  by  That  which  is  to  Come, 
calling  for  the  sacrificial  festival  and  procession,  for  the 
Passing  of  the  Present,  bedecking  every  barge  upon 
the  stream  witli  bright-coloured  garlands,  with  music 
and  dancing,  so  that  no  earthly  vesture  can  vie  witli 
the  gaiety  of  this  mortal  habit. 


2o8  A  STUDY  OF  DEATH 

Death,  as  the  end  of  life,  seems  especially  the  time 
of  parting  ;  but  a  closer  intimacy  is  broken  by  birth, 
and  every  crisis  of  our  existence  is  home-breaking  as 
well  as  home-making.  The  very  specialisation  of  life — 
cosmic,  individual,  and  social — is,  as  we  have  seen, 
through  division,  every  division  or  involution  being  a 
new  manifestation  of  reaction,  and  always  a  marvellous 
surprise.  In  the  individual  the  germ  becomes  organ  and 
the  organ  function,  and  so  the  stream  runs  away  from 
its  fountain.  If  it  were  a  perpetual  cycle  it  would  still 
be  through  waves  ascending  and  descending  ;  the  in- 
tegration being  forever  renewed  through  disintegration. 
In  such  organic  life  as  we  know  the  term  is  limited, 
with  constant  alternation  of  increase  and  expenditure ; 
but  a  point  is  reached  where  nutrition  is  checked,  and 
waste  gains  upon  reparation — the  line  of  demarcation 
between  youth  and  age. 


XIV 

The  burdens  and  pains  of  plastic  childhood  are 
quite  hidden,  not  only  from  outward  observation  but 
from  consciousness  itself.  The  ascent  is  not  like  the 
climbing  of  the  Hill  of  Difficulty,  but  rather  like  a 
translation  into  the  heavens,  the  burden  and  difficulty 
being  included,  as  if  they  were  participant 
^chiidhood°^  in  the  exaltation,  upborne  by  some  invisible 
power.  The  expansion  is  at  the  same  time 
a  withdrawing  and  an  imperative  absorption.  Hence 
the  quaint  mastery  of  childhood,  its  native  hauteur,  its 
sublime  sefishness.     It  is  said  by  those  who  have  stud- 


ASCENT  AND  DESCENT  OF  LIFE  209 

ied  the  child's  ways  of  thinking,  that  he  regards  aged 
people  as  in  the  state  of  becoming  little  ones.  We, 
on  the  other  hand,  looking  at  children's  faces,  seem  to 
see  beyond  them  the  abysmal  realm  of  the  Ancient  of 
Days.  How  swiftly  have  their  softly  fashioned  limbs 
scaled  the  old  battlements !  Ruddier  and  stronger  than 
the  dawn,  fresher  than  the  spring-time,  older  than  the 
stars,  they  spring  forever  from  the  loins  of  the  Eternal, 
and  no  visible  constellations  may  yield  their  true  horo- 
scope. 

The  ancient  symbolism  representing  the  apparent 
movement  of  the  sun  through  the  twelve  signs  of  the 
Zodiac  (corresponding  to  the  twelve  labours  of  Her- 
acles) is  true  also  in  its  application  to  the  cycle  of  a 
human  life.  First  the  solar  hero  is  lifted  by  the  help 
of  Aries  and  Cancer  in  his  ascending  movement,  reach- 
ing finally  the  summer  solstice  in  the  House  of  the 
Lion  ;  then  gently  declining  into  the  arms  of  the  Vir- 
gin, he  is  held  for  a  time  in  the  pause  of  Libra ;  and 
finally,  having  received  the  sting  of  the  Scorpion  and 
the  arrows  of  the  Archer,  he  passes  through  the  trope 
of  Capricorn  into  the  watery  region  of  Aquarius  and 
risces — the  signs  of  dissolution. 

The  human  child,  like  the  infant  Heracles,  avails  of 
the  heavenly  powers  with  which  it  is  secretly  allied,  be- 
ing for  a  time  withheld  in  its  true  kingdom,  which  is 
not  of  this  world.  For  childhood  Time  itself  is  an  in- 
fmite  expansion,  a  verisimilitude  of  Eternity  ;  the  reac- 
tion of  tender  puissance  is  quick  and  mighty,  so  that 
its  release  is  as  ready  as  its  seizure,  and  the  aged 
Reaper  with  the  scythe  is  not  needed  to  make  sure 
the  severance,  as  he  is  for  them  that  are  inveterately 


210  A   STUDY  OF  DEATH 

rooted  in  the  earthly  soil.  The  strain  of  buoyancy  is 
also  its  restraint,  herein  also  showing  the  reaction  in  a 
sure  inhibition,  a  marvellous  continence. 

Childhood,  as  measured  by  outward  observation,  is 
very  brief,  but  in  the  calendar  of  the  individual  con- 
sciousness it  transcends  all  seasons,  and  is  indeed  im- 
measurable. It  is  sacred  and  inviolate,  guarded  from 
the  use  and  waste  of  expenditure,  keeping  still  the  se- 
cret of  its  deathless  power,  while  most  including  and 
hiding  death.  It  is  a  flame  which  consumes  not — the 
flame  of  increase.  The  heavenly  foundations  are  laid 
of  life's  temple,  which  rises  like  an  exhalation  in  un- 
sullied purity. 


XV 

But  this  wholeness  is  an  integration  which  rises  above 

ruins,  and  while  itself  inviolable  is  a  resistless  violence 

and  ravishment.     It  takes  all  and  gives  nothing.     Its 

^j^^        dominion  is  greatest  when  it  is  most  with- 

Outward    drawn  from  earthly  contacts,  when  its  walls 

Quickening.  /•  i         i  -i        i 

are  soft  as  clouds,  and  when  as  yet  its  vo- 
racity shows  no  teeth  for  crushing  and  no  sting  for 
wounding.  All  signs  of  conflict  are  hidden  in  this  su- 
preme self -centring  absorption,  this  primal  storage. 
The  quickness  of  life,  also,  is  veiled  beneath  the  out- 
ward aspect  of  inertia  and  somnolence. 

Achilles  is  still  among  the  maidens,  like  one  of 
them,  and  wearing  their  garments ;  the  swiftness  of 
his  feet  is  not  yet  disclosed,  and  for  him  neither  spear 
nor  shield  has  yet  been  fashioned. 

The  time  comes  when  the  limit  of  capacity  is  reached. 


ASCENT  AND  DESCENT  OF  LIFE  -Mi 

when  the  invisible  quickness  becomes  an  outward  quick- 
ening, as  when  the  lightning  that  has  been  hidden  in  the 
depths  of  the  tense  cloud  leaps  from  its  lair  and  breaks 
the  heavenly  silence.  It  is  as  when  the  bow  has  been 
drawn  to  its  full  tension  and  is  released  for  the  other 
half  of  its  vibration,  speeding  the  arrow. 

We  have,  in  another  chapter,  considered  those  "  crit- 
ical moments"  in  all  development,  inorganic  and  or- 
ganic, which  Mr.  N.  S.  Shaler,  in  his  Fntcrpretation  of 
Nature,  has  treated  with  luminous  significance.  These 
belong  not  only  to  every  complete  cycle,  but  also  to 
every  living  moment,  which  has  its  two  sides — of  ten- 
sion and  release.  When  the  limit  of  tension  is  reached 
the  reaction  is  manifest  in  the  abrupt  action  which 
seems  explosive  in  the  escape.  There  is  this  limit  to 
the  involution  of  every  type  of  existence  ;  and  it  is  also 
indicated  in  every  diverse  plane  of  the  same  existence 
and  in  every  particular  process.  In  purely  physical 
phenomena  it  is  more  conspicuous,  as  in  the  sudden 
precipitation  of  a  shower  or  in  a  bolt  of  lightning.  In 
the  organic  world  there  is  greater  suspension  and  more 
modulated  strain.  We  do,  indeed,  note  the  quick  out- 
burst of  a  flower,  the  mark  of  hysterical  violence  in 
laughter  and  sobbing  and  in  a  passionate  word  or  act ; 
but  for  the  most  part  temper  disguises  the  tempest, 
and  the  critical  point  escapes  notice.  Yet  every  mo- 
tion, every  word,  every  thought,  marks  this  sudden  ac- 
cess, whereby,  indeed,  they  become  motion,  word,  and 
thought.  There  is  in  every  process  the  point  of  ab- 
rupt precipitation,  though  the  movement  break  as  qui- 
etly as  the  surf  of  a  summer  sea,  or  progress  in  rhyth- 
mic harmony  like  the  more  distant  waves,  whose  rupture 


212  A  STUDY   OF  DEATH 

is  hidden  in  their  fluxion.  There  is  the  gradual  reinforce- 
ment, the  movement  itself  becoming  momentum,  to  the 
point  of  excess  ;  in  youth  the  expenditure,  or  release,  is 
an  overflow,  an  invisible  exhalation,  while  the  hard- 
ened walls  of  age  resist  and  are  broken.  In  human 
affairs  there  are  crises  so  sudden  as  to  be  unanticipated 
in  the  slow  increment  of  movements  leading  up  to  them. 
The  masterly  practical  man  is  quick  to  see  the  first 
signs  of  the  storm  before  it  breaks.  Hence  the  em- 
phasis of  opportunity,  the  taking  of  the  tide  at  its  flood. 
In  every  great  movement  there  is  a  storm-centre,  tow- 
ard which  all  the  elements  are  drawn;  the  demand  is 
exhaustive ;  it  is  as  if  the  spirit  of  the  time  were  mar- 
shalling his  hosts  for  an  issue  known  only  to  him, 
crowding  expectancy,  accumulating  enthusiasm  to  fanat- 
ic excess,  overcharging  the  capacities  engaged.  Then 
suddenly  the  meaning  of  the  movement  is  known,  as  if 
certified  by  the  announcement  of  angelic  choirs,  whose 
theme  becomes  thenceforth  the  burden  of  human  speech 
and  song ,  the  passion  is  expressed  in  the  prodigality 
of  its  blossoming,  which  speedily  becomes  the  prodi- 
gality of  ruin.  What  matters  it  if  the  blossoms  are 
swept  away  by  the  wind  and  rain,  so  the  fruit  is  set ;  if 
the  walls  of  the  temple  fall,  so  the  Presence  that  filled 
the  temple  is  glorified ;  or  even  if  the  entire  structure 
of  a  civilisation  is  destroyed,  so  the  race  is  reborn ! 
There  is  no  outward  explication  of  such  crises ;  it  is 
upon  the  environment  that  the  relentless  demand  has 
been  made  ;  it  is  the  external  structure  that  has  yielded 
to  the  transformation  of  creative  life. 


/^jyy^i^ii  I      /*i/v/^     i^i^oiwU/Y  I      K^r    uii  i^ 


XVI 


Life  so  insists  upon   integration  —  makes  such  de- 
mands for  it  in  every  involution — that  we  come  to  look 
upon  the  temple,  thus  wondrously  fashioned   and   at 
such   costly  sacrifice,  as   its  end ;    but   the 
Lord,  looking  thereupon,  saith  :   "  Not  one     in''Rutn°" 
stone  shall  stand  upon  another."     The  ex- 
pression of  the  life  which  shaped  the  structure  is  possi- 
ble only  through  disintegration.    Things  high  and  holy 
are  for  brokenness  and  descent,  whereby  their  essential 
quality  is  manifested.     Life  ascends  to  that  point  from 
which  it  may  most  expressively  fall. 

Childhood  is  the  fountain  in  the  sky,  lifted  thither  by 
its  vital  tension,  and  there  permitted  an  unadulterated 
storage  ;  in  its  exaltation  an  image  of  primal  holiness, 
an  unmoral  innocence,  not  knowing  evil  as  distinct 
from  good.  But  when  the  time  comes  for  it  to  descend 
into  earthly  channels  and  contacts — this  is  the  other 
side  of  life,  the  contraction  of  its  sphere,  wherein  it  loses 
its  translucent  and  crystalline  purity.  Yet  it  is  at  this 
turning-point  that  the  individual  human  life  enters  upon 
its  fruition,  its  summer,  as  if  in  the  wanton  prodigality 
of  its  functioning— its  action  and  its  passion— it  would 
express  all  the  wonder  and  glory  hitherto  hidden.  It 
is  a  trope,  a  change  as  remarkable  as  that  which  befell 
the  planet  when  its  self-luminous  orb  became  opaque 
and  its  barrens  blossomed  into  the  luxuriant  life  which 
expresses  the  flaming  wonder  they  had  veiled.  Thus 
life  falls  into  its  special  excellence,  having  thus  also  the 
special  defects  of  its  excellences.     A  special  and  con- 


214  A  STUDY   OF  DEATH 

sciously  recognised  pathology  is  developed  which  even 
in  its  normal  course  has  its  fevers  of  excess  and  its 
chills  of  failure.  There  is  specific  good  and  specific 
evil  after  the  fall,  and  seen  as  distinct  in  amoral  sense. 
In  a  period  of  fruition  we  distinguish  between  fruits, 
and  guard  against  the  poisonous ;  we  especially  con- 
sider consequences.  Thus  virtues  are  defined  by  ends. 
In  a  delicately  poised  order,  of  complexly  interdepend- 
ent relations,  conscience  has  its  culture,  emphasising 
special  control  and  solicitude.  Prudence  and  temper- 
ance are  appreciated  as  supports,  maintaining  integrity 
in  a  world  where  all  things  are  falling  and  where  riot- 
ous waste  is  so  conspicuous. 


XVII 

As  we  have  seen,  in  our  consideration  of  the  progres- 
sive specialisation  of  life,  the  suspense  and  tempera- 
ment are  more  apparent  at  every  successive 
^ ""  ^  stage.  The  species  have  continuance  ;  the 
wave  is  caught  in  falling,  and  there  is  the  undulatory 
procession  of  generations.  Man  dwells  upon  the  earth, 
and  this  dwelling  has  new  and  stronger  meaning  with 
the  advance  of  civilisation ;  so  the  moral  aspect  of  hu- 
man society  is  deepened  from  age  to  age  in  a  constant- 
ly increasing  conservatism.  As  in  mechanics  gravita- 
tion is  made  to  promote  levitation,  so  even  the  ruins  of 
civilisations  contribute  to  the  greater  permanence  of 
societies  that  inherit  their  virtues.  The  spiritual  exal- 
tation of  the  Hebrew,  the  art  of  Greece,  the  jurispru- 
dence of  Rome,  though  they  could  not  save  from  fall- 


ASCENT  AND  DESCENT  Of-    LIFE  215 

ing  the  structures  in  which  they  were  originally  en- 
shrined, have  become  elements  of  sustaining  power  in 
the  structural  development  of  modern  social  life. 

The  individual  also  has  the  advantage  of  this  sus- 
tained undulation  at  the  noontide  height  of  maturity, 
the  prolongation  of  which  is  an  extended  plateau  hiding 
from  vision  the  precipitous  declivity.  He  does  not  see 
in  fruitfulness  the  signs  of  decay  or  how  much  of  do- 
minion he  has  surrendered  for  his  conscious  mastery. 
He  is  not  sensible  of  the  curvature  fixed  by  his  limita- 
tion ;  he  has  the  habit  of  walking,  forgetting  that  there 
is  falling  in  his  erect  progression — the  habit  of  speech, 
unfaltering,  of  facile  thought  and  action ;  he  is  con- 
scious of  rectitude,  and  he  glories  in  his  strength  and 
in  the  far-reaching  utilities  of  domestic  and  civic  func- 
tions. Like  the  river  in  the  full  volume  of  its  progress, 
he  possesses  and  enriches  the  plain.  He  rejoices  in 
the  full  splendour  of  summer,  in  the  decency  and  dig- 
nity of  ample  investiture.  The  green  slowly  turns  to 
golden,  first  the  blades,  then  the  ear  upon  the  silken- 
tasselled  stalk,  then  the  full  corn  in  the  ear.  Surely  the 
value  of  life  is  expressed  in  its  harvests,  and  in  the 
west  is  gathered  all  the  wealth  of  the  world ;  there  are 
the  golden  fruits  of  the  Hesperides.  These  gardens 
lie,  indeed,  on  the  verge  of  Pluto's  realm ;  but  man  in 
his  full  strength  docs  not  suspect  how  far  the  Dark 
King  ventures  inland.  The  streams,  of  course,  belong 
to  this  invader,  all  lapsing  Letheward,  and  his  hands 
stretch  forth  in  the  darkness  of  night  and  the  chill  of 
winter  ;  but  Persephone,  plucking  Howcrs,  found  him 
ere  the  shades  had  fallen  upon  the  fields  of  Enna ; 
Adam  and  Eve  heard  the  voice  proclaiming  him  among 


2i6  A  STUDY  OF  DEATH 

the  trees  of  Eden,  just  in  the  cool  of  the  day;  and  the 
bright-crested  aspiring  serpent  who  had  denied  death 
slunk  away  among  the  dry,  rustling  leaves  to  his  still 
confessional.  All  climbing  things  deny  him,  but  the 
very  outburst  of  their  denial  is  into  the  leaf  and  flower 
and  fruit  that  in  their  fall  shall  confess  him.  Yet  is  he 
patient,  letting  the  fruit  slowly  ripen.  He  permits  the 
long-withholding  of  childhood  from  the  summer  heat, 
waits  through  the  long  noon  of  manhood,  and  even  gives 
old  age  a  staff  against  too  swift  decline.  The  prolon- 
gation of  maturity  is  itself  a  support  to  the  declining 
years  of  a  passing  generation,  while  it  gives  sustenance 
and  protection  to  helpless  childhood  and  tutelage  to 
adolescence. 

This  suspense,  in  every  period  of  human  life,  empha- 
sises the  value  and  importance  of  that  life,  considered 
solely  in  its  terrestrial  relations.  Mr.  John  Fiske,  in 
showing  that  the  prolongation  of  human  infancy  has 
been  one  of  the  principal  factors  in  the  progress  of  the 
race,  made  a  novel  and  original  contribution  to  the  sci- 
ence of  sociology.  But  if  the  weakness  and  depend- 
ence of  childhood,  evoking  loving  care  and  sympathy, 
counts  for  so  much,  how  much  more  must  be  accred- 
ited to  the  invisible  might  of  childhood  as  the  hope  of 
the  world.  During  this  period  of  protection,  while  it  is 
establishing  its  cerebral  channels  of  communication 
with  the  outside  world,  it  is  at  the  same  time,  by  its 
withholding  from  that  world,  allowed  freedom  for  ex- 
pansion, for  the  deepening  of  its  capacity,  for  that  ex- 
alted tension  which  society  has  come  to  recognise  as 
the  mightiest  of  its  inspirations.  This  mystical  appre- 
hension of  childhood  becomes  the  poet's  assertion  and 


ASCENT  AND  DESCENT  OF  LIFE  217 

the  popular  intuition  ;  and,  since  it  regards  elements 
not  open  to  observation,  it  is  a  view  falling  outside  the 
scientific  scrutiny  that  regards  only  the  stimulation  of 
environment,  the  nutritive  processes  involved,  and  the 
resultant  structural  development.  "What  is  this  won- 
drous font  of  power?"  asks  science.  "Is  it  anything 
more  than  a  fund  of  vital  energy  dependent  upon  nu- 
trition for  its  storage  ?"  In  return,  we  ask,  what  is  it 
at  any  stage  of  its  outward  development?  At  what 
point  in  the  stream  does  this  transcendent,  invisible 
power  which  gives  human  life  its  spiritual  meaning  en- 
ter, if  it  is  not  at  the  fountain  ?  It  is  not  an  acquisi- 
tion. If  we  admit  it  into  our  view  of  human  existence 
as  a  whole,  we  must  include  it  from  the  beginning. 

Indeed,  as  we  have  seen,  this  involution  which  we 
know  as  childhood  is  at  the  fountain  something  that  it 
is  not  in  the  stream.  Its  expression  is  also  its  veiling. 
"  It  is  not  as  it  hath  been  of  yore,"  the  poet  complains. 
A  glamoui-  is  gone  that  never  comes  again,  it 

"...  fades  into  the  light  of  common  day." 

The  virginal  sense  of  things  first  seen  ;  the  surprise  of 
fragrance ;  the  native  feeling  of  i)rimal  dawns,  of  the 
heavenly  azure,  of  woods  and  streams,  of  haunting 
shadows  and  whispering  winds,  we  cannot  recall.  The 
steps  that  halted  then  are  hurried  now,  following  well- 
worn  paths  and  yet  lost  in  them.  The  storage  of 
strength  against  strain,  of  reparation  against  waste, 
is  not  like  that  primal  storage,  which  had  its  basis  in 
a  hunger  that  was  not  want.  No  after-sleep  is  like  the 
sleep  of  the  infant,  which  is  not  measured  to  meet  a 
special  weariness,  hut  is  rather  the  sign  of  the  hidden 


2i8  A   STUDY   OF  DEATH 

quickness  of  life  in  its  infolding,  as  wakefulness  is  of 
the  quick  unfolding,  growing  into  the  insomnia  of  old 
age.  Yet  the  nutrition  and  sleep  of  adolescence  and 
maturity  are  special  infoldings,  whereby  the  haste  of 
the  consuming  flame  is  retarded  and  the  plasticity  of 
childhood  is  in  some  degree  renewed,  though  it  cannot 
be  wholly  regained ;  and  waste  and  weariness  induce 
and  stimulate  these  processes  of  renewal. 

This  period  of  maturity,  sustained  by  constant  rein- 
forcement of  energy,  is  far  remote  from  childhood,  but 
it  is  true  of  the  man  as  of  the  youth,  that  he,  though  he 

"...  daily  farther  from  the  East 
Must  travel,  still  is  Nature's  Priest, 
And  by  the  vision  splendid 
Is  on  his  way  attended," 

and  this  vision  illumines  his  ripe  knowledge  and  gives 
its  own  transcendent  meaning  to  all  he  does. 


XVIII 

The  suspense  is  in  some  measure  maintained  in  the 

period  of  decline.     The  urgency  of  physical  passion  is 

spent  and  the  intense  strain  of  effort  is  relaxed ;  in  the 

golden  silence,  beneath  all  the  easy  garru- 

Decline. 

lousness,  contemplation  is  deepened,  undis- 
turbed by  passionate  interest.  The  last  juice  expressed 
from  the  vine  is  unutterably  rich.  Memory  seems 
weaker,  but  it  is  busy  at  the  old  font.  The  flame  of 
life  which  burned  only  green  in  the  spring-time  bursts 
forth  into  many  brilliant  autumnal  colors,  as  if  death 


/1SCENT  /tND  DESCENT  OF  l.ll-E  219 

Ii.ul  more  gaiety  than  birth.  Age  seems  to  be  a  tak- 
ing on  anew  of  childhood,  but  with  this  difference — 
that  the  reaction  awaits  some  other  sphering  of  the 
withdrawn  life.  Instead  of  the  aversion  which  ends  in 
seizure  there  is  the  lingering  clasp  of  cherished  things 
about  to  be  released — love  mingling  with  the  weari- 
ness, so  that  the  final  human  repentance  of  the  visible 
world  is  unlike  that  of  any  other  species  in  its  regret- 
ful, backward  glance  of  farewell.  In  man  alone  does 
love  conquer  the  strong  animal  instinct  which  insists 
upon  solitude  and  utter  aversion  of  the  face  in  death. 


XIX 

The  urgency  of  the  movement,  hidden  in  the  ascent 
of  life,  is  outwardly  conspicuous  in  the  descent.  There 
is  more  of  death  and  destruction  at  the  beginning  than 
at  the  end  ;  the  unconsuming  flame  is  most  intense, 
though  there  is  no  smoke  nor  conflagration. 
It  is  with   Dcatli   as  with  Evil  —  neither  is     t^. ^'"^ 

Disarray. 

apparent  to  us,  under  its  name,  in  the  up- 
lifting tension  of  life,  which  most  completely  mcludes 
both.  The  flame  is  tropical,  and  when  it  turns  it  rends  ; 
its  reaction  is  disclosed  as  a  wasting  consumption.  In 
all  germinant  organisms  we  note  the  hidden  quickness 
of  tiie  tender  infolding  life,  and  in  the  unfolding  an 
outward  quickening  in  blossom  and  song  and  radiant 
plumage,  when,  with  the  prophecy  of  new  life  to  come 
in  the  ripening  grain,  the  fertilisation  of  flowers,  the 
mating  of  the  birds,  and  the  myriad  forms  of  love-life 
in  the  whole  realm  of  animate   Nature,  Another  move- 


220  A  STUDY  OF  DEATH 

ment  begins,  hurrying  into  flight,  which  comes  at  length 
to  have  in  it  a  suggestion  of  disorder  and  disarray.  The 
song  sung  by  the  weird  Sisters,  when  they  unravel 
their  slowly  woven  web,  has  reckless,  dissolute  notes. 
The  ascendant  movement  of  life,  with  its  hidden  quick- 
ness, its  virginal  restraint,  seems  outwardly  slow,  and 
has  outwardly  also  the  aspect  of  ease  and  buoyant  rest, 
because  the  travail  of  its  climbing  is  mainly  borne  by 
unseen  powers ;  but,  in  the  descent,  it  would  almost 
seem  that  these  benignant  powers,  breaking  through 
the  veil,  had  suffered  a  transformation  and  become  de- 
structive foes,  losing  their  coy  reticence  and  playful 
ease,  and  were  striding  forth  in  open,  undisguised  vio- 
lence, and  with  indecorous  haste  were  flinging  their 
garments  to  the  winds,  bringing  all  things  to  naked- 
ness, profaning  all  shrines,  ravishing  all  Beauty,  brand- 
ing Plenty  as  wantonness,  and  Accomplishment  as  van- 
ity. What  was,  in  the  nascent  organism,  abundant, 
graceful  ease  and  rhythmic  overflow,  nourished  from 
hidden  sources,  becomes,  in  the  decay  of  the  organism, 
a  feverish  excess,  a  hectic  waste.  It  is  the  trope  of 
Capricorn,  and  the  pagan  imagination  was  easily  in- 
fected by  its  disturbance  ;  the  followers  of  Pan  clothed 
themselves  with  goat-skins,  and  grinning  satyrs  min- 
gled in  the  wild  rout. 

For  man  as  for  all  other  organisms  there  is,  in  the 
visible  course  of  things,  the  lax  and  ragged  conclusion 
— the  broken  golden  bowl  at  the  fountain  and  the 
wheel  broken  at  the  cistern.  The  fountain  cannot  re- 
fuse to  become  the  stream,  nor  the  stream  to  pass; 
any  arrest  of  the  descending  movement  only  accumu-. 
lates  disturbance  and  hastens  the  ruin.     It  is  the  bitter- 


/tSCENT  AND  DESCENT  OF  LIFE  221 

ness  of  Dead  Seas  that  they  have  no  outlet.  The  un- 
broken storage  of  the  miser  becomes  itself  corruption. 
The  belief  of  Heraclitus  in  the  eternal  flux  of  things 
must  somehow  be  reconciled  with  Plato's  plea  for  sta- 
bility through  a  harmony  that  is  eternal. 

There  is  no  ethical  resolution  of  the  problem ;  there 
is  indeed  no  problem  save  of  our  own  making.  The 
issues  of  life  have  their  spontaneous  reconcilement,  be- 
cause Life  itself  is  eternal.  There  is  in  that  life  a 
principle  which  is  creative ;  which  is  as  unmoral  as 
is  Childhood,  because  it  transcends  morality  ;  which 
makes  not  for  mere  rectitude,  but  for  righteousness,  not 
for  betterment  merely,  but  for  renewal ;  which  does  not 
mend  the  Prodigal's  rags,  but  brings  him  home. 


FOURTH    BOOK 
HEATH    UNMASQUED 


CIIAPTKR    I 
A    SINGULAR    REVELATION 


IX    every   system    known    to   us   some    singular  and 
striking    phenomenon    presents    itself — a    certain 
insistent  strain  of  the  harmony,  not  easily  explained, 
and    in  many   cases   remaining    forever    an 
insoluble    mystery.      The   Milky  Way,   the   i,^^;.^',"^^!^,, 
(nilf  Stream,  the  Trade  Winds,  the  current 
that  rules  the  magnetic  needle,  are  such  phenomena  in 
the  physical  world.     In  physiology  the  quickening  and 
dominant  power  of  germ-cells  discloses  to  the  student 
the  plasmic  Milky  Way  of  organic  life.     The  Dream 
impresses  us  as  a  similar  mystery  in  psychical  mani- 
festation.    Thus  singular  and  inexplicable,  in  the  cur- 
rents of  human  history,  is  that  one  of  them  which  de- 
termined the  Hebrew  destiny. 

The  Gentile,  or  pagan,  races  of  the  ancient  world 
accomplished  outward  integrity,  or  completeness,  in 
the  development  of  art,  science,  and  polity ;  they  had 
humane  literature  and  elaborate  religious  ritual.  The 
Hebrew  was  pre-eminently  the  broken  man.  Those 
prophecies  which  we  usually  regard  as  wholly  Messi- 
anic were  first  of  all  applicable  to  Israel.  He  is  the 
one  spoken  of  by  Isaiah  as  "  a  root  out  of  a  dry  ground  : 


226  A  STUDY  OF  DEATH 

he  hath  no  form  nor  comehness  ;  and  when  we  see  him 
there  is  no  beauty  that  we  should  desire  him.  He  was 
despised  and  rejected  of  men  ;  a  man  of  sorrows,  and 
acquainted  with  grief.  .  .  .  He  was  wounded  for  our 
transgressions,  he  was  bruised  for  our  iniquities  :  the 
chastisement  of  our  peace  was  upon  him  ;  and  with  his 
stripes  we  are  healed."  All  this,  consummated  in  the 
person  of  the  Christ,  pertained  to  the  race  whence  he 
sprang.  For  the  Hebrew  the  promise  of  the  rose  pre- 
sumed a  desert.  "Look  unto  the  rock  whence  ye  were 
hewn,"  says  the  prophet,  "  and  to  the  hole  of  the  pit 
whence  ye  were  digged.  Look  unto  Abraham,  your 
father,  and  unto  Sarah  that  bare  you."  In  Abraham's 
seed  all  nations  were  to  be  blessed  ;  but  how  sugges- 
tive in  this  primitive  gospel  is  the  emphasis  upon  the 
sterility  of  Sarah,  and,  after  the  birth  of  Isaac,  upon 
Abraham's  renunciation  of  him,  completed  in  the 
heart,  though  the  hand  stretched  forth  to  slay  was 
stayed  ! 

Always  in  the  history  of  this  race,  despised  above  all 
others  yet  above  all  others  glorified,  Canaan  must 
have  its  prelude  in  the  wilderness  ;  some  bitter  tribula- 
tion like  that  of  the  Egyptian  bondage  lies  ever  in  the 
background.  Canaan  itself — the  land  flowing  with  milk 
and  honey — was  a  field  of  terrible  carnage,  possessed 
only  after  many  fierce  battles,  and  with  difficulty  main- 
tained, lying  between  Assyria  and  Egypt  as  between  an 
upper  and  nether  millstone.  Its  captive  children  were 
sold  in  every  slave-market  of  the  Mediterranean.  The 
kingdom  established  by  David  was  short-lived  ;  in  the 
generation  succeeding  Solomon  it  was  broken  in  pieces, 
and  ten  of  the  (.welve  tribes  soon  disappeared  so  com- 


.-/  SlNGUL/fR   RF.y  FLAT  ION  227 

pletely  from  view  that  their  fate  has  become  a  histori- 
cal enigma.  The  remaining  tribes  of  Judah  and  Ben- 
jamin, harassed  for  several  generations  by  foreign  and 
intestine  wars,  were  carried  away  in  captivity  to  Baby- 
lon, from  which  a  small  remnant  returned  to  rebuild 
the  ruined  temple  and  rescue  from  oblivion  the  pre- 
cious records  of  the  past. 

It  was  after  this  captivity  that  the  more  gracious  as- 
pects of  the  Mosaic  law  were  emphasised,  and  there 
arose  the  sect  of  the  Pharisees,  in  its  origin  representing 
the  loftiest  spiritual  ideal ;  for  the  first  time  formulat- 
ing the  belief  in  a  resurrection  ;  and,  in  the  institution 
of  synagogue  worship  throughout  Palestine,  establish- 
ing the  simplest  form  of  religious  liberty  ever  known 
upon  the  earth. 

After  every  black  night  in  Jcwisli  history  there  was 
some  such  glorious  morning.  It  is  true  that  in  our 
Lord's  time  Pharisaism,  especially  in  Jerusalem,  had 
degenerated  into  a  habit  of  formal  righteousness,  but 
the  simple  religious  life  in  the  country  villages  was  to 
some  extent  maintained,  and  here  it  was  that  the  mere 
remnant  of  a  renniant  awaited  the  blossoming  of  a 
people's  hope. 

-At  the  birth  of  Christ  his  couiury  was  reduced  to 
the  position  of  an  insignificant  province  of  the  Roman 
i-'.inpire,  and  his  people  were  dispersed  throughout  the 
then  known  world.  Into  the  deepest  darkness  shone 
the  star  of  Bethlehem. 

Other  races  seem  to  have  grown  corrupt  within  tlieir 
outwardly  completed  structures.  The  Hebrew,  out- 
wardly broken,  was  inwardly  ni.ule  wholi-  in  the  beauty 
of  holiness.     Manv  were  called  l»nt  few  were  chosen  ; 


228  A  STUDY   OF  DEATH 

and  it  is  not  strange  that  in  this  trial  by  fire  there  was 
so  large  a  refusal  of  dross,  and  that  only  in  the  hearts 
of  a  faithful  few  was  a  destiny  so  singular  maintained 
and  cherished  to  its  final  consummation. 


II 

Looking  back  from  the  eminence  of  our  Aryan  civil- 
isation, and  considering  what  different  races  have  con- 
tributed thereto,  we  behold  this  one  vaulting,  flame- 
fretted  arch,  distinct  from  and  overreaching 

Fiam"^  all  others.  It  is  a  sacred  flame — how  dread 
even  to  the  Hebrews,  who  in  the  wilderness 
saw  it  as  a  pillar  of  cloud  by  day  and  a  pillar  of  fire  by 
night,  and  would  fain  have  fled  from  its  awful  illumi- 
nation back  to  the  flesh-pots  of  Egypt !  With  what  nat- 
ural yearning  toward  some  familiar  human  imagination 
they  moulded  the  golden  calf,  even  at  the  bidding  of 
Aaron,  while  Moses  was  with  God  in  the  mount  in  the 
midst  of  the  cloud  which  was  the  glory  of  the  Lord, 
and  the  sight  of  which  was  like  devouring  fire. 

Repellent  also  to  all  men  is  this  sacred  flame,  and  it 
is  with  serene  satisfaction  that  our  Western  thought 
turns  to  "  the  glory  which  was  Greece  and  the  grandeur 
that  was  Rome" — to  those  elements  in  the  fabric  of 
our  modern  life  which  are  of  classic  origin,  and  which 
commend  themselves  to  our  esteem  as  associated  with 
aesthetic  development,  with  intellectual  culture,  with 
ethical  stabilit}',  and  with  the  pride  of  human  accom- 
plishment, attested  by  monuments  whose  ruins  seem 
to  us  more  hospitable  than  do  the  tents  of  Shem,  or 


A  SINGULAR   RF.yF.LATlON  229 

that  holy  tabernacle  built  l)y  the  descendants  of  the 
Ucdouin  patriarch,  in  wliich  dwelt  the  rtaming  Pres- 
ence. 

Nevertheless,  this  arch  of  tire  transcends  all  others 
in  our  spiritual  temple,  surpassing  all  earthly  splen- 
dours ;  it  is  the  illumination  of  our  heavenly  heritage, 
from  a  promise  uttered  to  man  in  some  earlier  and 
deeper  sleep  than  fell  upon  Abraham — a  promise  an- 
swering to  the  inmost  desire  of  the  human  heart.  The 
outward  aversion  from  it  has  recourse  in  an  irresistible 
attraction  thereto.  The  glory  of  the  Lord,  shining  in 
another  face  than  that  of  Moses,  subdued  all  hearts, 
and  the  world  eagerly  ran  after  that  from  which  it  had 
seemed  to  be  running  away. 


Ill 


The  tendency  toward  structural  completeness  is  nat- 
ural and  wholesome  ;  it  is  development  in  human  ex- 
istence as  it  is  in  the  entire  cosmos.     It  is 
itself  a  breaking,  but  a  breaking  into  wholes,   c've^Jt'^l^re^ 
even  in  the  minutest  molecules.     The  frac- 
tions of  living  Nature  are  themselves  integers.     Form 
and  comeliness  are  cosmic  distinctions.     The  bride  is 
arrayed  for  her  lord.     The  lack  of  proper  vestment, 
like  deformity,  is  a  cause  for  shame  and  disappoint- 
ment.    Nakedness  is  clothed  upon.     The  more  sacred 
the  flame,   the  more  carefully  it   is  hidden,  and  the 
holiest  passion  is  veiled.     Life's  revels  are  masqued, 
and    the  vesture   is  manifold  ;    this  is  the  way  of  all 
prodigal  sons,  yet  the  fact  that  it  ends  in  raggedness 


230  A  STUDY  OF  DEATH 

and  ruin  is  Nature's  confession  that  the  Life  is  more 
than  meat  and  the  body  than  raiment. 

This  truth  which  Nature  confesses  at  the  end  of 
things,  in  articulo  mortis^  the  Lord  disclosed  at  the 
fountain,  as  the  spiritual  principle  of  life.  Thus  was 
the  inclusion  of  death  in  life  illustrated,  in  his  personal 
career  upon  earth,  by  his  denial  of  those  things  which 
in  the  natural  course  of  human  lives  are  accounted 
most  desirable.  He  renounced  without  denunciation. 
He  never  married,  but  marriage  he  blessed.  He  sought 
not  earthly  honours,  possessions,  "  troops  of  friends," 
but  to  these  in  themselves  he  attached  no  blame ;  he 
counselled  his  disciples  to  make  friends  of  even  the 
mammon  of  unrighteousness.  In  saying  that  Mary 
had  chosen  the  good  part  there  was  no  reflection  upon 
Martha.  He  was  not  an  ascetic  ;  his  very  divestiture 
was  abundantly  vital.  As  Nature,  insisting  upon  death, 
yet  values  not  the  waste  and  ruin  but  rather  refuses 
them,  driving  them  out  of  sight  with  the  violence  of 
her  winter  winds  and  utterly  consuming  them  in  the 
white  heat  of  her  frost,  so  the  Lord  reckoned  not  with 
the  dead  while  he  glorified  Death.  "  Let  the  dead 
bury  its  dead."  He  was  at  one  with  Nature,  who  lays 
such  emphasis  on  death,  because  through  death  is  her 
resurrection  ;  but  the  truth  in  his  word  was  a  spiritual 
principle  transcending  that  expressed  in  the  apparently 
closed  circles  of  all  natural  procession  ;  it  revealed 
the  reality  hidden  beneath  the  appearance  from  the 
foundation  of  the  world. 


A   SINGULAR  RF.y ELATION  231 


IV 

In  the  natural  course  of  things  man  sees  good  and 
evil  apart,  taking  the  one  with  delight,  succumbing  to 
the  other  as  inevitable.  He  rejoices  in  the  morning, 
but  night  wins  acceptance  because  of  his  weariness, 
which  is  a  kind  of  forced  repentance  of  the    ^, 

*  Natural  and 

day;  and  the  deeper  night   of  death  over-      Spiritual 

h,,  j.\      ^     -L.         Repentance. 

,  im   in  the  same  way,  so   that    he 

seems  in  a  natural  repentance  to  turn  from  the  world 
to  his  confessional.  He  is  overcome  of  evil.  But  the 
Lord  said,  "  Be  not  overcome  of  evil,  but  overcome  evil 
with  good."  Again  he  said, ''Resist  not  evil."  Now, 
he  well  knew  that  as  in  time  past  so  in  all  time  to  come 
the  phenomenal  conflict  with  evil  must  continue.  In 
the  prayer  he  taught  to  his  disciples  were  the  petitions 
"  Lead  us  not  into  temptation,  but  deliver  us  from  evil." 
He  was  not  enjoining  upon  men,  in  the  practical  con- 
flict of  life,  to  confound  evil  with  good.  He  might  as 
well  have  bid  them  confound  light  with  darkness. 
Tares  were  not  wheat,  though  they  grow  together  and 
must  continue  to  grow  together  until  the  harvest. 
What  he  announced  was  a  spiritual  principle  touching 
the  reality  beneath  the  phenomenal  struggle.  It  is  as 
if  he  had  said  :  "  Evil  and  Good  as  seen  by  you  appear 
separate  and  irreconcilable,  because  of  the  limitation 
of  your  vision  and  of  your  existence  ;  your  thought  and 
care  and  effort  are  engaged  in  a  conflict  whose  terms 
and  conditions  you  cannot  evade,  and  yet  no  man  by 
thinking  or  striving  can  add  one  cubit  to  his  stature  ; 
the  visible  limitation  remains  ;  and  the  conclusion  of  the 


232  A  STUDY  OF  DEATH 

struggle  is  the  apparent  triumph  of  Evil — even  as  the 
grave  swallows  up  all  that  live  and  Death  seems  the  Con- 
queror. In  this  partial  view,  this  finitude,  this  closed 
circle  which  you  call  the  course  of  nature,  you  are  like 
prisoners  and  captives,  accepting  evil  as  slaves  accept 
the  lash  of  a  taskmaster.  But  I  show  you  a  hidden 
truth,  masqued  and  disguised  by  visible  Nature — a  di- 
vine way,  whereby  as  children  and  not  as  servants  you 
shall  accept  Death  and  Evil,  including  and  comprehend- 
ing them  in  that  true  knowledge  of  the  Father  and  the 
Son  which  is  eternal  life,  in  its  spiritual  meaning.  Out- 
wardly there  is  the  striving  in  narrow  ways,  seeking  ever 
narrower  and  straighter,  but  inwardly  there  is  peace  and 
reconcilement.  This  is  faith  in  the  abounding  life  that 
forever  springs  freshly  from  its  fountain  ;  herein  is  the 
willing  repentance  that  is  not  mere  weariness  —  the 
losing  of  the  soul  to  save  itself,  the  taking  of  the  yoke 
to  find  it  easy,  the  drinking  of  the  cup  to  its  dregs  to 
taste  in  these  its  sweetness.  The  Pharisee  comes  to  the 
temple  and  offers  up  to  God  his  righteousness  ;  the 
publican  comes  and  offers  up  his  sins — in  him  is  re- 
pentance possible,  a  complete  burial,  a  new  birth.  A 
man  may  strive  outwardly  against  evil  in  every  shape 
it  outwardly  takes,  and  yet  so  know  the  Father  that  he 
shall  see  that  against  which  he  strives  as  something 
essential,  lying  at  the  very  root  of  life — that  his  open 
adversary,  stripped  of  his  disguises,  is  invisibly  his 
friend  from  the  beginning.  And,  again,  a  man  may 
strive  and  trust  alone  to  his  strength,  seeing  good 
and  evil  only  in  their  disguises,  and  for  a  season  he 
may  accumulate  the  good  and  fortify  himself  against 
the  evil,  securing  comfort,  safety,  and  outward  integ- 


A  SINGULAR   RF. DELATION  233 

rity;  yet  shall  the  inevital)le  end  come  when  the  edifice 
shall  be  broken  up  and  its  treasure  be  found  corrupt- 
ible, having  no  heavenly  root  or  lodgment.  Kvil  is 
known  only  as  an  enemy,  and  Death  as  the  last  enemy  ; 
the  adversary  is  never  seen  as  the  friend — there  is  no 
reconcilement.  The  whole  need  not  a  physician,  but 
they  that  are  sick.  IMessed  therefore  are  the  meek  in 
their  expansive  heritage  ;  blessed  they  that  take  to  their 
hearts  grief  and  poverty,  hunger  and  thirst,  and  deso- 
lating defeat — for  in  all  tb.ese  they  shall  know  Kvil  and 
Death  for  what  they  truly  are  in  a  divine  Creation." 


But  the  Lord  did  better  than  say  all  this  :  his  life 
was  this  eternal  truth  incarnate.  He  "  became  Sin  " 
and  glorified  Death. 

The   imagination   which  created  the  legend  of  the 
Wandering  Jew,  upon  whom,  in  the  presence  of  a  di- 
vine death,  fell  the  doom  of  deathlessness, 
introduced  into  the  scene  with  which  it  was    t^''"=^' C"'""- 

fied  Death. 

associated  an  element  of  striking  contrast, 
suggesting  the  beatitude  of  mortality  at  the  moment  of 
its  brightest  illumination.  Even  as  contrasted  with 
Evil  and  Death  not  thus  divinely  illustrated,  no  more 
dreadful  sentence  could  be  pronounced  upon  any  child 
of  Earth  than  this :  that  for  him  there  should  never  be 
pain  or  sickness,  any  hunger  or  thirst,  any  shadow  to 
break  the  endless  continuity  of  light,  or  any  death.  To 
make  utterly  impossible  any  benediction,  to  this  exist- 
ence upon  ground  not  accursed  for  its  sake,  it  would 


234  A  STUDY   OF  DEATH 

only  be  necessary  to  add  to  the  sentence  its  awful  con- 
comitant :  Thou  shalt  never  fall.  Atropos,  the  un- 
turning  one,  could  take  no  surer  shape.  The  fixed 
horror  of  such  a  fate,  so  suggestive  to  us  of  utter 
weariness,  would  in  reality  lack  even  that  relenting  in 
its  motionless  apathy.  But  in  the  presence  of  the  meek 
and  lowly  Jesus,  bending  beneath  the  weight  of  the 
cross,  the  blank,  inflexible  doom  becomes  unutterable 
and  unthinkable,  until  the  imagination  of  it  vanishes 
into  absurdity. 

For,  behold,  the  Lord  had  fallen  !  He  had  descend- 
ed from  the  bosom  of  the  heavenly  Father,  and  all  his 
life  upon  the  earth  had  been  downward — away  from 
the  rich  and  powerful  and  wise  and  consciously  correct 
to  the  poor  and  sick  and  sinful;  and  now  this  descent 
was  to  be  completed,  in  the  grave,  even  in  hell — from 
the  zenith  to  the  nadir.  Lucifer  no  farther  fell,  nor  any 
son  of  Adam  following  him,  than  did  this  second  Adam — 
Life-bearer,  but  drinking  all  of  the  mortal  cup  ;  Lighter 
of  the  Way,  but  taking  all  its  darkness,  even  the  mid- 
night of  its  lowest  abyss. 

Thus  was  Death  illustrated  and  made  glorious,  show- 
ing at  its  core,  its  sting  having  been  taken,  a  strange 
and  mystical  beauty,  not  hitherto  suspected,  and  not 
apparent  in  the  shining  perfections  and  accomplish- 
ments which  men  reach  after  all  their  lives.  The 
Lord's  blessings  had  always  been  upon  the  victims  in 
the  strife  of  earth,  and  in  the  most  human  of  his  para- 
bles he  had  shown  how  the  returning  prodigal  had  been 
given  the  best  robe  and  the  merry-making  feast — signs 
of  a  loving  father's  rejoicing  that  aroused  the  envy  of 
the  unroving  elder  brother;  and  in  many  ways  he  had 


//   SINGULAR    RF.yF.LATlON  235 

i.ui;;ht  tlie  preciousness  of  lost  things  found,  the  glory 
of  defeat  turned  into  victory.  Now  he  was  about  to 
make  deatli  itself  enviable,  so  that  men  would  run  after 
it,  fearful,  indeed,  lest  they  should  escape  martyrdom  — 
so  that  they  would  listen  with  delight  to  the  prayer  for 
the  passing  soul,  invoking  the  sure  and  speedy  work 
upon  it  of  purgatorial  Hames,  expecting  that  way  some 
secret  excellence. 

VI 

Ikit  the  Lord  did  not  teach  men  to  seek  that  which 
we  commonly  call  death  any  more  than  he  taught  them 
to  do  evil.     It  is  true,  moreover,  that  he  saw  no  living 
righteousness    in  what   men   call  good  —  in 
conduct  having  reference  to  those  particular    ''''^''"^'.°" 

f  *^  of  Lvil. 

ends  which  men  seek  as  children  of  this 
world.  He  revealed  to  men  a  larger  heritage,  an  eter- 
nal kinship — they  were  the  children  of  God.  He  re- 
ferred them  to  this  fountain  of  love  and  light,  from  which 
every  human  heart  had  its  pulsation,  as  the  well  lives 
from  its  spring.  To  be  born  again  was  to  know  one's 
self  as  a  child  of  the  Father  —  to  know  and  do  His 
will.  As  children  of  this  world,  men  distinguish  between 
•  good  and  evil,  and  so,  under  their  limitation,  they  must, 
knowing  benefit  and  harm  from  their  relations  to  a  sys- 
tem which  has  beginning  and  end  ;  but  a  new  birth 
brings  a  new  vision,  wherein  it  is  seen  that  God  creates 
Evil  as  He  creates  Good,  and  that,  as  parts  of  this  Crea- 
tion, they  are  coinplementary. 

Is  not  Christ  the  Word  from  the  beginning,  and  so 
Nature  before  he  was  the  Christ — includinii  all  that  in 


236  A  STUDY   OF  DEATH 

Nature  we  call  evil  as  well  as  what  we  call  good  ?  He 
was  the  first  Adam  as  he  is  the  last;  as  the  first  espe- 
cially the  son  of  God,  and  as  the  last  especially  the  son 
of  man.  Thus  twice  humanly  incarnate — the  root  and 
flower  of  the  race — he  is  truly  the  Head  of  humanity, 
identified  therewith  from  the  beginning  even  unto  the 
end. 

He  never  blamed  men  for  their  failures  or  praised 
them  for  their  goodness,  because  he  knew  the  limita- 
tion of  every  creature.  From  the  heart  of  man,  as  from 
the  source  of  all  life,  proceeded  both  good  and  evil,  but 
in  the  new  heart — that  of  the  child  born  of  the  spirit, 
and  seeking  perfection  not  after  an  outward  pattern  but 
after  the  divine  type;  that  is,  to  be  "perfect  as  your 
Father  in  heaven  is  perfect " — the  good  included  the  evil. 
This  is  the  reconcilement.  To  do  the  will  of  the  Fa- 
ther, life  must  be  willingly  accepted  on  its  own  flaming 
terms,  including  that  which  will  ultimately  burn  away 
all  its  outward  vesture — even  its  habit  of  goodness. 

Is  not  this  to  bring  man  into  harmony  with  Nature, 
in  all  whose  cycles  of  motion,  truly  seen,  repulsion  ends 
in  attraction,  and  is  really  one  therewith  from  the  point 
of  departure  ? 

The  limitation  itself  is  a  bond  of  return.  The  place 
of  exile  is  sure  to  be  home,  and  existence  in  time  has  its 
ground  in  the  life  eternal. 

VII 

Why  do  we  think  of  Christ  as  the  Eternal  Child  ? 
And  why  did  he  present  childhood  as  the  type  of  the 
kingdom  of  heaven  ?     The  child  is  unmoral,  has  not  dis- 


A  SINGULAR  REVELATION  237 

cretion  or  prudence,  and  is  not  guided  by  the  maxims 
of  experience.  These  are  negations  perti- 
nent to  a  spiritual  life  in  its  latent  powers ;  J^  g' 
but  positively  childhood  represents  the  prin- 
ciple of  such  a  life,  because  in  it  evil  is  hidden,  as,  indeed, 
goodness  is  also ;  its  germinant  and  expansive  life  is  an 
ascent  upon  the  wings  ofdeath.  It  is  the  season  of  taking 
rather  than  of  giving,  when  capacity  is  deepened  ;  when, 
at  the  same  time  that  it  is  most  energetically  making  its 
connections  with  the  outside  world,  it  is  most  withdrawn 
from  that  world,  its  communications  with  which  are 
wholly  for  its  own  sake,  availing  of  the  descending  min- 
istrations of  other  life  for  its  own  ascension.  When,  at 
a  later  period,  it  knows  self-sacrifice,  then  is  the  abun- 
dant death  it  has  taken  given  up,  yielded  in  expenditure, 
becoming  patent. 

It  is  this  uplifting  power,  making  death  and  evil  its 
ministrants — wondrous  in  its  growth,  in  its  vitalisation 
of  its  plastic  organism,  and  in  its  supreme  elasticity  ; 
quick  in  its  reaction,  so  that  no  possession  clogs  or 
encumbers;  the  fittest  symbol  of  creative  might  and 
authority — which  the  Lord  had  in  view  when  he  made 
childhood  the  type  of  his  kingdom.  In  that  view  also 
was  comprehended  the  unhesitating  trust  of  the  child 
and  his  fearless  meekness  and  docility.  All  these 
qualities,  in  their  heavenliest  excellence,  are  combined 
in  our  conception  of  the  Christ  Child. 


238  A  STUDY  OF  DEATH 


VIII 

But  childhood  is  the  type  only ;  that  which  it  repre- 
sents is  a  fuller  expression,  with  deeper  meanings.    The 
^, .   ^         childhood  is  continued  into  manhood  in  the 

This  Type 

as  Developed  Christ-life — into  the  expenditure,  the  sacri- 
fice, the  descent,  and  yet  in  these  maintain- 
ing the  type.  The  latent  potency  is  developed,  but 
still  keeps  its  plasticit)',  through  a  willing  surrender 
of  all  those  outward  things  which,  in  the  ordinary  line 
of  human  experience,  make  manhood  desirable.  The 
exercise  of  power  in  this  line  was  suggested  to  the 
Lord  in  the  temptation  on  the  mount.  To  the  child 
the  possession  of  earthly  things  has  little  meaning  ;  he 
accepts  all  gifts  as  toys  and  falls  asleep  among  them, 
showing  instinctive  contempt  of  those  functions  and 
uses  familiar  to  mature  experience ;  but  to  the  man  the 
offer  of  external  grandeur  is  the  great  temptation,  and 
he  may  yield  to  it  legitimately  with  the  determination 
of  a  righteous  exercise  of  power,  truly  magnifying  his  of- 
fice. Therefore  when  Christ  puts  aside  the  temptation  it 
means  more  than  the  instinctive  contempt  of  the  child  ; 
it  is  a  willing  rejection.  It  is  something,  too,  quite 
different  from  what  is  commonly  called  self-denial ; 
in  the  course  of  ordinary  experience,  the  acceptance 
might  be  the  true  altruism.  The  Lord  would  have  re- 
jected the  office  of  High  Priest  of  Jerusalem  as  readily 
as  he  did  that  of  King  of  the  Jews,  which  the  people  ex- 
pected the  Messiah  to  take.  It  was  officialism  itself, 
whether  sacred  or  secular,  that  he  renounced.  He  re- 
frained from   entering:   into   those   domestic   relations 


//  SINGULAR  RF.y ELATION  239 

properly  enjoined  as  duties  upon  a  citizen  of  this 
world.  Because  he  was  to  be  the  real  priest  and  king 
of  ail  men,  because  he  was  to  illustrate  man's  divine 
sonship,  he  repudiated  for  himself  the  insignia  of  a 
power  and  kinship  which  meant  less  tiian  these.  The 
renunciation  was  a  sacrifice  only  in  the  meaning  ex- 
pressed by  the  Psalmist :  "  Lo,  I  come  to  do  thy  will, 
0  God."  In  the  worldly  view  this  withdrawal  from 
benefits  ardently  sought  by  all  men,  and  from  duties 
held  to  be  most  binding  and  sacred,  seems  to  be  an 
anticipation  of  the  divestiture  wrought  by  death.  In 
reality  it  is  the  introduction  of  a  new  death,  bring- 
ing it  ne.\t  the  new  birth.  It  is  a  natural  intimacy,  re- 
peating the  process  which  goes  on  in  the  germination 
of  any  seed,  the  outward  husk  of  which  is  dissolved 
for  the  abounding  of  the  inward  life :  in  another  sense 
it  is  mystical,  since  the  new  life  is  drawn  from  an  in- 
visible fountain.  It  is  the  abundance  rather  than  the 
divestiture  that  is  the  spiritual  reality.  As  in  child- 
hood, so  in  all  germinant  life  :  there  is  a  hidden  vio- 
lence, an  immeasurable  might,  something  imperative, 
which  makes  a  kingdom.  In  the  Christ  this  is  marvel- 
lously shown  in  the  multiplication  of  the  loaves  and 
fishes  under  his  dividing  hand,  and  in  the  healing 
virtue  of  his  touch.  His  growth  to  manhood  is  de- 
scribed as  a  growth  in  grace,  keeping  the  plastic  and 
creative  potency ;  and  that  all  evil  as  well  as  death  is 
solvent  at  this  fountain  is  aptly  expressed  in  St.  Paul's 
saying  that  "  Wiiere  sin  abounded,  grace  did  much 
more  abound." 


J40  A   STUDY  OF  DEATH 


IX 


We  see,  then,  why  loss  is  the  first  word  of  the  king- 
dom of  heaven,  and  why  the  baptism  of  the  Lord  is 
with  fire.  It  is  because  flame  destroys  that  it  is 
constructive ;  and  this  thought  brings  us  bade  to 
the  Hebrew,  and  enables  us  to  better  comprehend  his 
outward  brokenness  and  divestiture ;  for  the  flame 
which  in  the  Christ  was  the  illumination  of  the  spir- 
itual truth  of  an  eternal  life ;  which  in  its  fusion 
absorbed  and  consumed  the  external  fabric  of  exist- 
^,  .,,^       ence — the    habit   which    men    called   good 

Child  Type  _  ° 

Developed  in  as  wcll  as  that  which  they  called  evil — and 
which  became  the  pentecostal  flame  of  a 
new  human  fellowship,  was  the  consummation  of  that 
which  burned  in  the  heart  of  every  faithful  Hebrew 
from  Abraham  to  Simeon — a  torment  without,  but  an 
inward  peace. 

In  many  ways  the  Hebrew  race,  in  the  fulfilment  of 
its  peculiar  destiny,  foreshadowed  the  spiritual  principle 
illustrated  in  the  singular  life  of  Jesus.  As  he  was  the 
Desire  of  all  nations,  and  therefore  could  not  mar  his 
brightness  as  the  Sun  of  a  spiritual  system  embracing 
all  humanity  through  any  merely  worldly  aspiration,  so 
the  promise  made  to  Abraham  was  one  including  all 
nations,  and  this  large  expectation  would  have  failed 
of  its  true  expression  in  earthly  successes  and  triumphs, 
in  the  attainment  of  those  things  "  which  the  Gentiles 
seek." 

We  think,  too,  of  the  ancient  Hebrew  as  a  child,  and 
in  a  peculiar  sense  the  child  of  God.     "The  Hebrew 


A  SINGULAR  REVELATION  241 

children  "is  a  characteristic  phrase,  as  applicable  to  a 
people  always  in  a  comparatively  plastic  state,  and 
whose  language  never  departed  from  its  native  and 
radical  simplicity. 

Considering  what  the  spiritual  life  of  the  Hebrew 
means  for  us,  we  are  surprised  that  a  vine  which  has 
spread  over  the  earth  occupied  so  small  a  garden  in  its 
original  growth,  quite  escaping  the  notice  of  classic  his- 
tory. In  no  field  of  human  achievement  has  the  ancient 
Hebrew  left  any  signal  monument  of  worldly  grandeur. 
\Vc  can  account  for  his  political  insignificance  by  situa- 
tion and  circumstance,  but  for  his  lack  of  any  positive 
accomplishment  in  science,  art,  or  philosophy  we  can 
find  no  explanation  save  in  his  peculiar  genius  and  des- 
tiny; and  of  these  the  only  ancient  sign  left  us  is  his 
sacred  literature.  That  he  was  not  destitute  of  imagina- 
tion is  shown  in  this  literature,  which  is  as  singular  in 
its  distinction  from  all  others  as  was  his  whole  history 
from  that  of  all  other  peoples.  Here  the  imagination 
takes  its  loftiest  flight  in  song  and  prophecy,  and  its 
simplest  strain  in  the  quaint  records  of  patriarchal  life, 
in  the  story  of  Joseph  and  of  Ruth,  and  in  the  most 
fully  incarnate  idyl  of  passionate  love  ever  put  in  words 
— the  Song  of  Solomon  ;  and  there  is  no  appearance  of 
incongruity  in  bringing  together  all  these  into  that  sacred 
collection  known  to  us  as  the  Holy  Dible.  Never  in 
human  expression  has  there  been  so  intimate  associa- 
tion of  the  sensibility  of  the  flesh  with  the  highest  spir- 
itual exaltation  ;  and  we  note  the  absence  of  that  which 
lies  between  the  spirit  and  the  sensibility — that  play  of 
mental  activity  which  is  so  especially  the  charm  of  al- 
most all  classic  and  of  all  modern  literature.  In  this 
16 


242  A  STUDY  OF  DEATH 

connection,  it  is  significant  that  while  the  Hebrew  gave 
a  natural  expression  to  his  emotions  in  the  song  and 
the  dance,  and  delighted  in  personal  adornments,  in  per- 
fumes and  savory  foods  and  wines,  bringing  these  also 
into  close  association  with  religious  worship,  he  had  no 
representative  arts,  such  as  painting,  sculpture,  or  the 
drama.  While  his  spiritual  expression  was  thus  so  di- 
rectly incarnate,  he  did  not  seek  that  perfection  of  bodily 
exercise  which,  among  the  Greeks,  was  the  result  of 
elaborate  athletic  training. 

It  may  be  said  that  this  lack  of  completeness  is  ex- 
plained, as  in  the  case  of  any  barbaric  race,  by  the  fact 
that  the  Hebrew  was  so  backward  and  unprogressive — 
so  slow  to  put  away  his  childhood.  But  this  is  his  very 
singularity.  Why  was  he  thus  withheld  in  the  plastic 
state  of  childhood?  It  is  not  true  of  the  Hebrew  race 
that  it  was  barbaric,  in  the  proper  sense  of  the  term. 
Other  Semitic  peoples  from  the  same  old  Arabian  desert, 
like  the  Phoenician  and  the  Assyrian,  were  builders  of 
cities,  and  advanced  rapidly  from  the  nomadic  state  into 
very  complex  forms  of  civilisation.  Others  still  re- 
mained in  the  desert,  where  they  may  be  found  to-day, 
degenerate,  indeed,  but  otherwise  living  in  the  same 
manner  as  did  their  ancestral  tribes  four  thousand  years 
ago.  During  the  long  period  of  the  patriarchate,  which 
was  a  prolonged  childhood,  the  spiritual  capacity  of  the 
Hebrew  was  deepened ;  but  the  quality  and  might  of 
this  expansion  are  indicated  and  measured  by  the  re- 
sultant movement,  culminating  in  the  appearance  of 
the  Messiah  and  the  resurrection  and  revitalisation  of  a 
dead  world  ;  and  they  are  not  to  be  accounted  for  by 
any  outward  condition. 


A  SINGULAR.   RE  INFLATION  243 

The  prolonged  childhood  was  an  essential  prelude 
to  a  so  singular  manifestation  :  it  was  a  childhood 
maintained  after  the  disappearance  of  the  patriarchate, 
and  through  the  entire  cycle  of  the  Hebrew  destiny. 
One  of  its  characteristic  traits  is  shown  in  the  wonder- 
ful power  of  assimilation.  It  has  been  asserted  by  pro- 
found scholars  that  the  Hebrew  derived  his  Sabbath 
from  the  Babylonian,  the  institution  of  the  Judges  from 
the  Phoenicians,  and  the  rite  of  circumcision  from  the 
Egyptians,  along  with  the  ark,  the  Shekinah,  and  the 
Neshulon,  or  brazen  serpent,  which  held  its  place  in  the 
Holy  of  Holies  until  it  was  thrust  out  by  Ezekiel.  Even 
his  idea  of  angels  and  of  a  future  life  is  said  to  have 
taken  definite  shape  through  contact  with  the  Persians 
after  the  great  captivity.  Assuming  that  all  this  is  true,  it 
would  only  show  the  marvellous  selective  genius  of  the 
Hebrew.  Does  the  child  prepare  for  himself  his  heri- 
tage ?  He  accepts  that  which  he  has  not  made,  but 
he  makes  it  his  own,  and  from  his  own  heart  gives  it  a 
meaning.  The  purpose  involved  in  the  spiritual  des- 
tiny of  the  Hebrew  "  is  purposed  upon  the  whole  earth  ;" 
therefore  to  this  child  the  earth  is  a  heritage,  and  the 
whole  world  brings  its  offerings.  What,  then,  if  the 
skilled  men  of  Tyre  built  Solomon's  temple  ?  In 
Isaiah's  forecast  of  glorified  Zion  the  stranger's  will- 
ing tribute  to  that  glory  is  magnified.  "■  The  Gentiles 
shall  come  to  thy  light,  and  kings  to  the  brightness  of 
thy  rising.  .  .  .  The  abundance  of  the  sea  shall  be 
converted  unto  thee,  the  forces  of  the  Gentiles  shall 
come  unto  thee.  .  .  .  And  the  sons  of  strangers  shall 
build  up  thy  wails."  This  Hebrew  childhood  stands 
for  that  of  humanity — its  issue  is  the  Son  of  Man. 


244  A  STUDY  OF  DEATH 

This  people  was  by  its  fervid  enthusiasm  lifted  to  a 
plane  of  expression  so  lofty  that  its  pride  was  not  in 
the  initiation  of  institutions  any  more  than  in  their  per- 
fection ;  only  that  inward  grace  was  regarded  which 
gave  them  a  living  soul.  Its  possession  of  outward 
things  was  an  adoption  in  the  name  of  the  Holy  One. 
The  zeal  was  also  a  jealousy.  Whatever  hands  raised 
the  temple,  the  Jews  would  have  destroyed  the  edifice 
rather  than  admit  within  its  sacred  enclosure  the  statue 
of  a  Roman  emperor.  The  attempt  of  Antiochus  Epiph- 
anes  to  merge  Hebraism  into  Hellenism  aroused  the 
heroic  and  successful  revolt  of  the  Maccabees.  In  the 
early  period,  when  the  patriarchs  in  alien  territory  rec- 
ognized the  power  therein  of  alien  gods,  the  jealousy 
of  a  tribal  religion  was  consistent  with  the  tolerance  of 
other  religions  equally  provincial,  and  was  very  differ- 
ent from  that  which  in  later  times  guarded  a  compre- 
hensive faith  in  a  Jehovah  who  is  the  God  of  all  the 
earth — this  guardianship  implying  a  responsibility  as 
broad  as  the  faith.  In  this  higher  view,  Israel  was  a 
peculiar  people,  not  as  one  enjoying  exclusive  benefits, 
but  rather  as  undergoing  special  sufferings  for  the 
whole  human  race — a  view  not  easily  maintained  save 
by  the  very  elect,  but  cherished  by  the  prophets  in 
every  age. 

The  divestiture  of  the  Hebrew  was  as  conspicuous 
in  his  religious  as  in  his  secular  life.  He  was  forbid- 
den to  make  an  image  or  likeness  of  anything  in  the 
heavens  or  in  the  earth  or  in  the  waters  under  the  earth. 
Every  other  prohibition  of  the  Decalogue  was  deemed 
as  obligatory  in  the  Egyptian  system  of  ethics  as  in  the 
Mosaic  law,  but  this  was   distinctively   Hebraic.     In 


A  SINGULAR  REy ELATION  245 

their  beginnings  the  arts  of  painting  and  sculpture 
have  always  been  associated  with  the  expression  of  re- 
ligious feeling,  but  they  were  denied  any  nurture  by  the 
Hebrew  faith.  The  prohibition  is  not  merely  the  ex- 
clusion of  polytheism  and  idolatry,  but  of  all  represent- 
ative art.  A  living  movement  must  in  no  way  be  ar- 
rested in  a  dead  thing.  The  swiftness  of  the  primitive 
paschal  feast,  the  erect  attitude  of  the  participants  sug- 
gesting expedition,  showed  the  indispositon  to  loiter  in 
any  sacred  way.  The  prophets  always  regarded  with 
aversion  the  elaborate  ritual  of  the  temple  worship  at 
Jerusalem — a  living  movement  arrested  in  fixed  forms. 

Symbolism  was  not  excluded  by  the  prohibition  of 
the  simulacrum ;  rather  it  was  heightened,  keeping  more 
closely  to  an  inward  meaning.  The  one  essential  di- 
vine symbol  was  man  himself,  God's  express  image  in 
the  world  of  living  things.  The  Hebrew  progression 
in  spiritual  lines  was  toward  the  God-man  ,  it  was  the 
culture  of  an  Emmanuel. 

The  human  nature  of  the  Hebrew  was  the  same  as 
that  of  every  other  race,  having  the  same  aspirations, 
mental,  moral,  and  religious,  the  same  eager  desires 
for  earthly  possession  and  power  —  for  all,  indeed, 
which  it  seems  to  have  been  denied ,  and  these  natural 
tendencies  common  to  all  mankind  were  not  only  amply 
illustrated  at  every  period  of  this  people's  history,  but 
intensified  by  unsatisfied  hunger.  The  great  majority 
fell  away  centuries  before  the  appearance  of  the  Mes- 
siah, drawn  almost  irresistibly  by  the  fascinations  of 
the  pagan  world — its  nature  worship,  its  indulgence  of 
fond  imaginations,  its  splendours  and  dramatic  pomp ; 
and  of  those  who  were  held   to  the  loftv  strain,  how 


246  A  STUDY   OF  DEATH 

many  were  hedged  in  by  the  compelling  Angel  of  the 
Lord  or  subdued  by  suffering  and  the  pressure  of  cir- 
cumstance ;  how  many  were  alarmed  by  the  threaten- 
ings  or  persuaded  by  the  pleadings  of  the  prophets  ! 
But  to  the  faithful  few  who  waited  for  the  glory  to  be 
revealed — to  the  seers  and  the  prophets  and  the  guile- 
less country  shepherds — there  w-as  another  charm,  more 
potent  than  any  which  could  appeal  to  the  sense  or  the 
intellect — the  charm  of  that  expectation  which  lifts  the 
heart  of  the  mother  waiting  her  time,  radiant  in  her 
travail.  Here  was  that  Israel  which  should  "  see  of 
the  travail  of  his  soul  and  be  satisfied."  Here  burned 
that  sacred  flame  which  preyed  upon  and  devoured  the 
embodiment. 


X 

To  the  early  Aryan  also  God  was  a  fire — a  fire  which 

built  and  beautified  the  world  ;  which  was  the  fervour  of 

the  animal  and  the  glory  of  the  flower,  and  which  had 

its  intimate  human  symbol  in  tlie  flame  upon 

Distinction       ,       ,  ,  ,  ^  ^        ...  „ 

between  He-   the  hearth-stone,  the  centre  of  familiar  anec- 
brewand      tion  and  loving  kinship.     But  to  the  Hebrew, 

Pagan  Faitli.        _  .  . 

his  God  was  a  consuming  lire,  which  so  re- 
buildcd  life  in  a  new  heaven  and  a  new  earth.  Where 
the  pagan  saw  creation  with  its  ceaseless  round  of 
birth  and  death,  the  Hebrew  with  prophetic  vision  saw 
recreation — a  new  death  and  a  new  birth.  "  Art  thou 
a  master  in  Israel,"  said  the  Lord  to  Nicodemus,  "and 
knowest  not  these  things  .''"—the  things  pertaining  to 
the  mystery  of  regeneration.  The  charm  of  such  a 
faith  is  that  of  a  desire  never   exhausted  in    outward 


^  mmjLL.-ir  Rr.yiu.ATtoN  347 

realisation,  and  so  conserving  its  native  might.  In 
paganism  the  religious  instinct  was  given  complete 
scope.  Paul  complained  of  the  Greeks  that  they  were 
too  religious,  and  he  welcomed  the  signs  of  a  worship 
of  the  unknown  God,  of  a  divinity  not  circumscribed 
by  the  limits  of  imaginative  definition  and  of  ritualistic 
familiarity.  The  pagan  system  of  worship  was  a  net- 
work of  ritualism  and  a  hotbed  of  sacerdotalism.  In  its 
beginnings,  true  to  Nature,  the  lines  of  its  development 
were  brought  to  completion  within  the  closed  circle  of 
a  visible  environment,  so  that  the  secret  of  Nature 
itself  was  hidden.  The  Hebrew  faith  looked  forward 
to  the  divine-human  Incarnation  ;  the  pagan  anticipated 
this  incarnation,  exhausting  its  imagination  of  it  in 
types  which  fell  short  of  and  precluded  the  transcend- 
ent intuition. 


XI 

The  conservation  of  the  spiritual  principle  tiirougli 
the  incompleteness  of  outward  form  and  structure  was 
promoted  by  the  Hebrew  prophets.  Whenever  the 
race  was  borne  aloft  in  the  common  aspira-    ...   . 

'  Mission  of 

tion  of  all  civilised  peoples  for  military  glory,  ihc 
for  the  luxury  and  grandeur  of  cities,  for  the  '^"''"'  ^ 
splendours  of  a  royal  court  and  a  temple  ritual,  it  was 
continually  thrust  back  to  earth,  prostrate  as  one  pos- 
sessed by  demons,  and  by  prophetic  exorcism  was  com- 
pelled to  confess  its  peculiar  destiny.  These  prophets 
were  thorns  in  the  tlesh  of  kings  and  of  priests  ;  they 
were  the  great  disturbers,  the  preachers  of  humiliation  ; 
but  they  were  the  people's  hope,  and  thougli  in  their 


248  A  STUDY  OF  DEATH 

sadly  triumphal  journeys  they  rode  upon  asses,  they 
were  hailed  by  popular  acclamations  and  recognized 
as  pre-eminently  men  of  God.  Through  their  influ- 
ence social  ambitions  as  well  as  national  aspirations 
were  held  in  check.  The  Prophet  was  ubiquitous  and 
irrepressible,  and  from  the  time  of  Samuel  there  was 
a  school,  a  continuous  succession,  of  these  witnesses 
to  a  Lord  surely  to  come  on  earth.  Tliey  remoulded 
sacred  traditions,  and  the  critical  scholar  detects  traces 
of  their  illuminating  and  transforming  influence  in  the 
pages  of  holy  writ,  giving  a  deeper  meaning  to  the 
record  of  creation,  the  legend  of  Eden,  and  the  summa- 
tion of  the  Law. 


XII 

To  bring  in  the  Eternal  Child,  and  to  show  that  in 

him  man   is,  even  within   the  limitations  of  time,  the 

heir  of  an  eternal  life,  was  the  Messianic  destiny  of  the 

Hebrew.     This  plant  in  the  garden   of  the 

Hebrew  *  " 

Thought  of  Lord  was   diligently  tended  by  the  divine 
husbandman,  relentlessly  pruned,  cut  back  to 
the  quick,  and  thus  was  ever  kept  green  and  tender,  as 
on  the  very  brink  of  an  exhaustless  fountain. 

Often  the  vine  strayed  beyond  the  garden  wall  and 
lost  its  succulence ;  perversions  there  were  to  which 
even  the  prophets  were  reluctantly  indulgent,  as  in  the 
popular  clamour  for  a  king;  the  law,  so  gentle  in  its 
spirit  and  associated  with  the  meekest  of  men  in  its 
beginnings,  came  to  tolerate  a  kind  of  rigid  justice  — 
the  requirement  of  an  eye  for  an  eye,  a  life  for  a  life ; 
and,  according  to    Ezekiel,  the    perversion  was  some- 


A   SINGULAR   RH DELATION  249 

times  of  divine  origin,  Jehovah  himself  giving  his  peo- 
ple "statutes  that  were  not  good  and  judgments  where- 
in they  should  not  live,"  and  "  polluted  them  in  their 
own  gifts,  in  that  they  caused  to  pass  through  the  fire 
all  their  first-born,  that  He  might  make  them  desolate  . . . 
to  the  end  that  they  might  know  that  He  was  the  Lord." 
This  declaration,  so  startling  to  a  modern  ear,  was  not 
intended  to  convey  the  impression  that  God  tempted 
men  to  do  evil,  but  was  a  forcible  expression  of  a  con- 
viction, characteristic  of  Hebrew  faith,  that  the  respon- 
sibility for  evil  as  for  good  was  in  the  largest  sense 
divine.  " '  I  create  good  and  I  create  evil,'  saith  the 
Lord."  It  was  not  permitted  the  Hebrew  to  think  of 
his  sins  as  his  own.  His  derelictions  were  monstrous, 
and  he  needed  the  prophetic  consolation  that  the  Fa- 
ther shared  the  wanderings  of  His  children,  encompass- 
ing them  in  infinite  wisdom  and  compassion,  so  that  in 
the  end  they  might  see  that  the  way  of  even  the  widest 
wanderer  was  the  way  home. 

Thus  the  flexibility  and  plasticity  of  the  Hebrew 
childhood  was  maintained  even  in  his  idea  of  the  law. 
Through  the  Pentateuch  runs  the  warm  current  of 
divine  tenderness,  in  its  merciful  intention  including 
also  with  the  children  the  stranger  within  their  gates. 
It  is  a  protest  against  inhumanity  of  every  sort.  In 
no  sacred  scripture  is  there  shown  such  a  sense  of 
childlike  dependence  upon  the  Giver  of  all  good  (in- 
cluding all  evil),  or  such  faith  in  the  unfailing  mercy 
and  free  forgiveness  of  God  as  in  the  Psalms  and  in 
the  Prophets. 

The  Hebrew  thought  of  God  was  the  child's  thought 
— the  child's  intimate  thought,  and  had  in  it  a  naive 


250  A  STUDY   OF  DF./1TH 

feeling  not  discoverable  in  the  early  pagan  thought. 
The  latter  was  more  completely  crystallised  in  its  ex- 
pression, more  definitely  projected  in  the  form  of 
myths  that  sought  correlation  and  consistency,  while 
the  Hebrew  thought  became  neither  mythology  nor 
theology,  being  withheld  in  that  flowing  realm  where 
all  life  is  a  constant  miracle — a  field  of  easy  transfor- 
mations, of  shadowy  appearances  that  come  and  go  as 
in  a  dream,  of  living  truths  completed  in  their  own 
contradiction. 

The  instability  of  his  environment  impressed  the 
Hebrew.  E.xistence  seemed  to  him  like  the  fluidity  of 
water,  now  lifted  up  in  unsubstantial  vapour  and  again 
taking  visible  shape,  falling  to  the  earth  and  dispersed 
over  its  surface — a  blessing  even  in  its  descent  and 
dispersion.  P'ormal  ethics  was  as  impossible  to  him 
as  was  fixed  dogma.  It  never  occurred  to  him  to  de- 
termine the  consistent  structure  of  human  character 
any  more  than  it  would  to  make  a  chart  of  the  divine 
nature  and  attributes,  limiting  his  God  by  definition. 
His  hope  was  not  a  logical  expectation  ;  and  therefore 
we  do  not  find  in  the  Prophets  any  formal  determina- 
tion of  Messiahship,  which  nevertheless  we,  looking 
back,  can  see  dominant  in  living  imagination  and 
pregnant  phrase.  Some  issue,  it  was  felt,  there  must 
be  of  deliverance  ;  but  when  we  read  in  Isaiah  of  "  a 
sword  bathed  in  heaven  "  we  know  better  than  he  what 
depth  of  meaning  was  in  his  words.  There  is  no 
generalisation  in  the  expression  of  the  great  hope ;  the 
imagination  always  takes  a  concrete  shape,  but  capable 
of  expansion  into  what  we  see  is  the  spiritual  principle 
of  a  new  kingdom,  as  when  the  prophet  foresees  some 


A  SINGULAR  REVELATION  251 

reconciliation  to  come  of  good  and  evil :  "  The  wolf 
also  shall  dwell  with  the  lamb,  and  the  leopard  shall  lie 
down  with  the  kid  ;  and  the  calf  and  the  young  lion 
and  the  fatling  together ;  and  a  little  child  shall  lead 
them." 

For  the  Hebrew  there  was  no  logical  plan  of  any 
life.  He  saw  no  anomaly  in  the  suffering  of  the  inno- 
cent for  the  guilty — the  procession  of  life  was  in  no 
other  way ;  it  was  a  course  of  vicarious  passion  from 
generation  to  generation.  In  the  time  immediately 
preceding  the  coming  of  Christ,  the  belief  gained 
ground  and  became  a  conviction  that  the  sufferings  of 
an  innocent  man  were  of  living  value  to  the  race,  hav- 
ing not  merit  as  satisfying  divine  justice,  but  a  com- 
municable virtue  in  the  action  and  reaction  of  a  life 
Avherein  formal  justice  had  no  place.  Reaction,  often 
taking  the  extreme  form  of  contradiction,  was  so  famil- 
iar to  his  experience  that  the  Hebrew  conceived  it  as 
prominent  in  divine  as  in  human  operation.  The  wheel 
was  always  turning,  so  that  the  low  were  lifted  up  and 
the  exalted  were  cast  down.  His  beatitudes  were,  like 
those  of  our  Lord,  apparent  paradoxes.  Repentance, 
associated  in  his  mind  with  abject  misery,  as  in  the 
mind  of  the  Prodigal  Son,  was  the  great  reaction  in  the 
life  of  a  man,  bringing  him  home ;  and  he  would  as 
soon  have  had  a  god  of  wood  or  stone  as  one  who  did 
not  himself  repent,  so  that  the  Father's  mood  could 
respond  to  that  of  His  returning  child.  To  him  God 
was  not  the  Immutable.  The  visible  universe  was 
but  His  vesture,  to  be  folded  up  like  a  garment  in  His 
own  good  time — forever,  indeed,  being  folded  and  un- 
folded.    What,  then,  was  there  which  man  could  wrap 


252  A   STUDY   OF  DEATH 

about  himself,  whether  of  goodness  or  badness,  that 
must  not  fall  away,  leaving  him  naked  in  the  day  of  the 
Lord  ?  Tiie  outwardly  built-up  character,  of  whatever 
sort,  must  be  consumed  in  His  fire.  The  flame  which 
destroys  is  the  flame  of  Love ;  though  seeming  to 
angrily  swell  and  roar,  devouring  every  dry  thing, 
yet  the  beginning  thereof  is  the  tender  yearning,  and 
the  issue  the  tender  renewal  of  the  eternal  kinship. 
The  wheel  of  life,  showing  red  and  black  beneath, 
shows  green  in  the  softness  of  warmth  and  light  above; 
and  when  the  revolving  spheres  in  heaven  themselves 
grow  old,  the  fire  that  consumes  them  destroys  utterly, 
that  there  may  be  completeness  of  annihilation  and  so 
entire  transformation — a  new  wheeling  and  sphering  of 
morning  stars. 

The  flame  of  life  is  tropical,  forever  turning  and  final- 
ly rending.  But  the  obverse  of  nothingness  is  Crea- 
tion. Therefore  the  Hebrew,  in  the  loftiest  strain  of 
his  spiritual  imagination,  loved  to  dwell  upon  the  signs 
of  destruction.  To  him  life  presented  the  constant  al- 
ternation of  wrath  and  love,  of  storm  and  peace,  of  dark 
oblivion  and  softly  rising  dawns  of  remembrance.  In 
the  extremity  of  affliction  he  rent  his  clothes;  then  he 
anointed  his  head  and  washed  his  face.  This  man  of 
sorrows  was  anointed  with  the  oil  of  gladness  above 
his  fellows. 

XIII 

The  anthropomorphism  of  the  Hebrew  w^as  implied 
in  a  faith  which  so  closely  united  the  divine  with  the 
human.    The  earliest  conception  of  this  union  was  that 


A  SINGULAR   REVELATION  253 

of  a  flesh  and  blood  kinship,  and  sacrifice  in  its  origi- 
nal form  was  a  feast,  celebrating  and  renew- 

Hebrew 

ing  this  intimate    covenant.      The   Hebrew   Symbolism 
continuation    of   this  old   Bedouin   kinship,  t""^'^";?  i"- 

r'     carnation. 

while  it  was  really  a  transformation,  yet  main- 
tained the  intimacy  of  the  divine  relationship.  Blood 
was  still  its  livin*^  current,  and,  wherever  shed,  returned 
to  its  source.  Next  to  the  current  of  life,  the  increase 
thereof,  whose  symbol  was  fatness,  was  held  especially 
sacred,  and  in  sacrificial  rites  the  fat  which  was  burned 
went  up  as  a  sweet  savour  of  grateful  return  for  the 
abounding  of  life,  as  the  blood  shed  was  a  response  for 
life  itself.  The  Hebrews  were  forbidden  to  eat  the 
blood  or  the  fat  of  an  animal,  since  these  are  the 
Lord's.  Perhaps  it  was  from  this  association  that 
Sweden borg  regarded  fat  as  the  celestial  principle. 
With  the  Hebrews  it  was  associated  with  the  feeling  of 
mercy  and  compassion,  and  was  the  sign  of  bounty ; 
but  its  essential  mystical  significance  relates  to  abun- 
dance not  as  plenty,  but  as  increment — the  power  of  in- 
crease which  is  so  pre-eminently  the  miracle  of  life  in 
its  wondrous  fertility  and  growth.  In  the  spiritual  as 
in  the  physical  world  the  first  of  all  commandments  is 
"  Be  fruitful  and  multiply.''  Herein  also  is  the  princi- 
ple of  authority  {audoritas  from  aiigeo,  to  increase),  the 
gracious  marrow  of  our  hard  bones.  The  perversion  of 
the  principle  is  avarice,  oppression,  hardness  of  heart, 
scripturally  indicated  in  the  phrase,  as  applied  to  a 
man  thus  degenerate,  designating  him  as  "enclosed  in 
his  own  fat."  In  the  Oriental  conception  the  beauty 
of  woman,  was  the  favour  of  embonpoint ;  and  according 
to  the  most  recent  deliverance  of  embryological  science 


254  ^  STUDY   OF  DEATH 

tlie  better  nourished  ovum  becomes  the  female.  In 
maternity  the  two  sacred  Hebrew  symbols  are  united. 
The  blood  of  the  mother  is  turned  into  milk,  and  from 
the  roundness  of  her  breasts  flows  into  the  roundness 
of  cheek  and  limbs  that  give  to  infancy  its  grace  and 
favour. 

Attention  has  already  been  drawn  to  the  fact  that 
Hebrew  symbolism  was  confined  to  a  living,  growing 
organism,  as  distinguished  from  aesthetic  re-presentation 
in  alia  materia — in  stone  or  on  the  canvas.  We  see 
in  this  symbolism,  as  above  indicated,  an  especial  con- 
finement to  a  human  body,  as  the  real  spiritual  temple 
— "the  temple  of  God  "  in  St.  Paul's  interpretation.  It 
is  the  carnal  which  becomes  the  Incarnate  :  cast  down 
to  hell  and  lifted  up  to  heaven.  The  symbolism  reached 
its  most  profound  meaning  in  the  words  of  Christ: 
"  Except  ye  eat  the  fiesh  of  the  son  of  man  and  drink 
his  blood,  ye  have  no  life  in  you."  And  he  who  said 
this,  in  the  same  breath  repudiated  the  flesh  as  profit- 
ing nothing  .  "  The  words  that  I  speak  unto  you — they 
are  the  spirit  and  they  are  life."  While  this  is  a  con- 
tradiction of  the  one  declaration  to  the  other,  both  to- 
gether are  really  an  expression  of  the  identity  of  em- 
bodiment with  spirit,  "  He  who  hath  seen  me  hath  seen 
the  Father."  The  vine  which  has  been  so  long  tended 
and  pruned  has  come  to  its  fruitage  ;  its  grapes  have 
been  trodden  in  the  wine-press,  and  here  is  expressed  its 
free  spirit — that  which  was  its  life  from  the  beginning. 

The  Hebrew  idea  of  spirit  implied  personality ;  it 
was  not  an  abstraction.  Therefore,  the  adjective  "  spir- 
itual "  was  not  in  use.  It  occurs  but  once  in  the  Old 
Testament  (Hosea  ix.  7),  where  it  has  not  the  modern 


A  SINGULAR  RE  y EL/IT  ION  255 

sense,  and  never  in  the  Gospels,  though  so  frequent  in 
St.  Paul's  Epistles.  The  phrase  "spiritual  life,''  so  fa- 
miliar to  modern  thought,  is  not  to  be  found  in  the 
Bible.  Tlie  spirit  must  have  embodiment,  and  could 
not  otherwise  be  conceived.  Thus  the  Spirit  of  God  de- 
scended upon  Christ  when  he  was  baptised,  taking  the 
body  of  a  dove.  To  the  polytheistic  Aryan  this  Spirit 
would  have  taken  diverse  shapes  in  numberless  divini- 
ties—  dryads  and  naiads  and  nymphs;  but  to  the  He- 
brew it  was  the  One.  Pagan  divinities  were  given  the 
human  shape  ;  in  the  Hebrew  faith  man  was  fashioned 
in  the  image  of  God,  and  though  the  visage  of  humanity 
was  marred,  yet  had  the  Divine  Spirit  seized  upon  the 
seed  of  Abraham  for  the  renewal  of  His  image.  The 
divine  kinship  was  to  be  realised  in  the  flesh,  and  in  a 
sense  far  deeper  and  more  intimate  than  that  in  which 
the  Jews  "had  Abraham  for  their  father."  This  in- 
timacy is  sometimes  expressed  in  the  scriptural  phrase, 
designating  a  man  in  a  state  of  peculiar  exaltation  as 
"in  the  Spirit."  They  were  sons  of  God  to  whom  the 
Word  came,  and,  in  an  especial  sense,  Christ,  who  was 
the  Word  become  flesh. 

In  Christ  the  Spirit,  which  had  been  veiled  and  hid- 
den, was  revealed  as  free — in  a  mystery  openly  wrought 
in  his  very  body.  "  I  have  power  to  lay  down  my  life, 
and  I  have  power  to  take  it  again."  Is  not  this  the 
full  expression  of  a  freedom  which  may  well  be  called 
that  '•  of  the  sons  of  God  " — the  breaking  of  a  circle 
hitherto  closed  as  to  human  vision  it  seemed,  or,  rather, 
the  completion  of  the  circle  by  showing,  in  the  Resur- 
rection, the  other  half  of  it,  hitherto  shadowed  by  the 
apparent  conclusion  of  Death? 


256  A  STUDY  OF  DEATH 


XIV 

We  must  be  on  our  guard  against  the  conception  of 
what  we  have  called  the  Hebrew  destinj',  as  being,  be- 
cause it  was  so  singular,  something  contrary  to   the 
course  of  Nature,  when  that  course  is  truly  seen.     The 
^,    ^.         parabola  described  by  a  comet  seems  singu- 

The  Singu-    ^  _  -^  .         .  . 

larity  not  lar  to  the  dcnizcus  of  planets  moving  in  ellip- 
^uper  .  un  .  j^j^^j  orbits,  but  we  do  not  therefore  exclude 
this  phenomenon  from  our  science  of  astronomy.  What 
we  call  supernatural,  applying  the  term  to  any  singular 
manifestation  of  life,  is  something  in  nature  itself  which 
is  inexplicable  through  any  co-ordination  we  have  been 
able  to  make.  Even  the  mystical  view,  which  tran- 
scends the  visible  in  its  intuition  of  creative  life,  only 
postulates  the  hidden  side  of  nature — the  fountain  of 
its  issue  ;  as  if,  recognising  the  visible  as  development 
in  form  and  structure,  and  in  a  harmony  imperfectly 
comprehended  by  us,  we  saw  also,  with  the  poet,  that 
"All  foundations  are  laid  in  heaven."  While  we  are 
naturally  apt  to  think  of  vital  systems  as  planned,  all 
forms  having  been  divinely  premeditated  and  all  rela- 
tions preconceived  with  reference  to  adaptation,  still 
we  know  that  the  creative  must  be  the  formative  and 
involve  the  adaptation,  and  that  the  admission  of  a 
single  arbitrary  element,  such  as  we  associate  with 
human  design  and  the  adaptation  of  means  to  ends, 
would  introduce  into  the  universe  the  operation  of  a 
limited  wisdom — not  of  wisdom  spontaneously  coming 
under  a  limit,  but  finite  at  its  source,  and  liable  to  the 
fallibility  and  uncertainty  attending  all  human  experi- 


A   SINGULAR  REVELATION  257 

mentation.  Moreover,  we  know  that  even  in  human 
Hfe — in  all  that  determines  its  real  issues,  as  distin- 
guished from  ends  consciously  in  view  —  there  is  no 
such  arbitrament,  but  rather  a  vital  destination  from  a 
purpose  that  cannot  fail,  inerrantly  wise. 

The  Hebrew  was  no  more  a  man  of  destiny  than  was 
the  Assyrian,  the  Chinese,  or  the  Indo-European.  In 
the  physiology  of  humanity,  each  of  these  races  had  its 
special  allotment  of  function  by  a  yital  destination  like 
that  which  determines  the  drift  of  constellations,  the 
configuration  of  continents  and  the  currents  of  the  air 
and  the  sea.  Yet  the  mission  of  the  Hebrew  was  as 
peculiar  and  distinct  as  are  the  course  and  temperature 
of  the  Gulf  Stream  in  the  midst  of  the  waters.  It  can- 
not, in  our  thought  of  it,  be  separated  from  the  incar- 
nate Lord,  to  whom  was  given  "power  over  all  flesh," 
so  that  the  mystery  of  the  Incarnation,  though  so  inti- 
mately associated  with  the  seed  of  Abraham,  is  yet 
catholic  and  genetically  dominant  as  associated  with 
the  destiny  of  the  whole  human  race. 


XV 

The  repudiation  of  Christ  by  the  Hebrews  is  as  re- 
markable as  his  acceptance  by  the  Gentiles.  "  He 
came  to  his  own,  and  his  own  received  him  not."  This 
was   but   the   continuation   of   the  hostility 

1  1        T->         I  r     1  1    •  Attitude  of 

shown  to  the  Prophets,  of  the  recalcitrance  jewandGen- 
of   this  obstinate  and   stiff-necked   people    "'^,|°s"** 
against  its  peculiar  destiny  from  the  begin- 
ning.    There  had  been  the  deepening  of  a  vast  hun- 


258  A  STUDY  OF  DEATH 

ger  —  in  the  few,  indeed,  for  the  bread  fronni  heaven, 
but  in  the  many,  especially  at  Jerusalem,  for  earthly 
rehabilitation.  To  these  latter  the  Son  of  David,  the 
long-expected  redeemer  of  his  people,  seemed  only  to 
aggravate  their  desolation.  He  despised  the  glory 
upon  which  their  hearts  were  set,  bringing  their  pride 
to  the  dust  even  as  had  the  Prophets  before  him.  He 
repudiated  them,  even  their  boasted  kinship  with  Abra- 
ham and  their  consciousness  of  an  especial  divine  elec- 
tion ;  his  sermons  and  parables  exalted  other  peoples 
at  the  Jews'  expense  ;  he  predicted  the  destruction  of 
their  temple.  He  put  aside  his  own  mother  and  breth- 
ren in  favour  of  a  more  blessed  kinship.  He  chose  for 
his  companions  those  whom  the  pious  Pharisees  and 
Levites  deemed  outcasts.  He  crucified  them,  and  they 
crucified  him.  He  told  them  that  publicans  and  har- 
lots entered  the  kingdom  before  them  ;  they  preferred 
Barabbas,  the  robber,  to  him,  and  condemned  him  to 
die  between  two  thieves.  He  seemed  to  Judas  false 
to  a  cherished  hope,  and  Judas  betrayed  him.  Even 
his  friends,  those  who  believed  in  him,  were  com- 
pelled to  drink  the  cup  of  bitter  humiliation  at  his 
defeat  and  death,  and  to  listen  to  the  jeers  of  them 
that  said  in  scorn  :  Others  he  saved,  himself  he  could 
not  save.  In  this  dark  hour  his  disciples  were  stricken 
with  shame  and  fear,  and  one  of  them  denied  him. 
Failure  was  turned  into  triumph  by  the  Lord's  resur- 
rection;  but  the  full  meaning  of  this  glorious  morning 
was  not  appreciated  by  the  believers  who  remained  at 
Jerusalem,  clinging  to  the  old  ritual  and  still  rejecting 
the  uncircumcised,  while  the  sect  of  Ebionites  wholly 
misconceived  the  new  life,  ignoring  its  positive  princi- 


A  SINGULAR  REVELATION  259 

pie,  which  was  to  revitalise  and  transform  the  world, 
and  continued  beyond  the  Jordan  the  practice  of  a 
sterile  asceticism,  maintaining  that  divestiture  which 
in  itself  was  merely  a  negative  and  accidental  aspect 
of  the  Christ-life. 

The  hunger  of  the  Gentile  for  the  Clirist  was  due  to 
inanition,  to  the  vanity  of  earthly  accomplishment,  and 
was  a  downright  malady;  like  the  fever  of  the  prod- 
igal, who,  having  been  sated  with  revels,  had  been 
brought  to  starvation,  while  the  Hebrew,  like  the  elder 
brother  in  the  parable,  had  been  kept,  albeit  by  a  kind 
of  compulsion,  in  the  Father's  house.  The  Gentile 
had  come  into  a  barrenness  which,  left  to  itself,  must 
become  utter  sterility,  as  of  a  rod  that  could  not  blos- 
som. He  had  not  been  tormented  by  the  consuming 
flame  of  a  sacred  fire  or  by  a  school  of  prophets  for- 
ever cutting  his  life  back  to  its  root.  His  oracles  were 
dumb  ;  his  temples,  adorned  with  the  statues  of  divini- 
ties, were  haunted  by  the  ghosts  of  dead  gods  and  not 
filled  by  a  living  presence  ;  his  ritual  was  more  easily 
repudiated  than  that  of  Jerusalem  could  be  by  Hebrews 
as  devout  as  the  apostle  James.  Therefore  he  not  only 
with  greater  avidity  accepted  the  new  faith,  but  was 
more  alive  to  its  newness,  and  readier  to  give  it  a  prac- 
tical embodiment,  making  our  Christendom. 

Very  likely,  if  we  had  the  means  of  ascertaining  the 
historical  truth  of  the  matter,  we  should  find  that 
among  the  Jews  those  who  most  eagerly  embraced 
Christianity  were  the  Pharisees,  not  only  because  the 
idea  of  the  resurrection  associated  with  the  early  and 
beautiful  faith  of  this  sect  had  been  in  so  remarkable 
a  way  revived,  but  because  their  religious  observances 


26o  A  STUDY   OF  DEATH 

— like  those  of  the  pagans — had  become  so  formal  in 
minute  and  trivial  details  as  to  the  more  readily  fall 
into  oblivion  and  disuse.  Certainly,  after  the  resurrec- 
tion of  Christ,  we  have  no  record  of  their  opposition 
to  the  new  faith,  and  Paul,  who  boasted  himself  "a 
Pharisee  of  the  Pharisees,"  was  the  great  apostle  to 
the  Gentiles. 

The  Gentiles,  who  stood  outside  of  that  earthly  kin- 
ship which  related  the  Hebrews  to  Christ,  and  who  had 
directly  no  part  in  his  birth,  have  yet  given  him  his 
embodiment  in  the  world,  overshadowed  by  the  Holy 
Spirit  for  a  new  conception  of  the  Emmanuel.  There- 
fore said  Isaiah  : 

"Sing,  O  barren,  thou  that  didst  not  bear;  break 
forth  into  singing,  and  cry  aloud,  thou  that  didst  not 
travail  with  child :  for  more  are  the  children  of  the 
desolate  than  the  children  of  the  married  wife,  saith 
the  Lord." 

Another  Sarah  laughed  in  her  tent.  Another  virgin 
was  to  magnify  the  Lord. 


XVI 

The  real  meaning  of  a  movement  is  disclosed  in  the 

issue.     The  personality  of  Jesus  was  the  issue  of  the 

Hebrew  destiny.     He  was  the  Child  of  that  race,  and 

as  it  is  that  which  is  to  come  that  is  domi- 

The  Umver-    j-)j^j-,t  j-^jg  singularity  determined  the  singular 

sal  Hope.  ^  b  J  & 

character  of  his  people  from  the  beginning, 
who  thus  became  the  progressive  incarnation  of  him. 
In  him  was  concluded  this  embodiment  through  a  flesh- 


A  SINGULAR  REVELATION  261 

and-blood  kinship.  Through  that  more  intimate  kin- 
ship with  the  Father,  which  it  was  especially  his  mis- 
sion to  reveal  and  make  real  for  all  men,  Christian  hu- 
manity is  a  new  incarnation  of  him,  as  in  a  spiritual 
body.  Thus  the  Lord  is  ever  to  come,  reappearing  in 
every  renascence  of  human  society.  The  Divine  name 
Jehovah,  or  Javch,  as  Dr.  John  De  Witt  has  shown 
in  his  version  of  the  Psalms,  means  not  merely  /  iz?//, 
but  I ajH  to  come ;  so  that  in  the  largest  sense  all  mani- 
festation is  his  appearance.  The  history  of  humanity 
is  a  divine  history. 

What  we  commonly  call  history  is  a  record  of  struct- 
ural development  ending  in  decay.  In  a  spiritual  in- 
terpretation of  human  history  we  see  death  only  as 
birth,  regarding  not  merely  what  falls  but  also  and 
chiefly  resurrections  —  a  line  of  successive  manifesta- 
tions ever  newly  revealing  the  Father;  and  in  such  a 
view  we  trace  from  the  earliest  record  to  the  present 
time  a  more  or  less  distinct  line  of  progressive  revela- 
tion. It  is  a  prophetic  line,  as  remote  as  possible  from 
any  sacerdotal  association,  yet  ecclesiastical  in  the  orig- 
inal meaning  of  the  term  (from  ecclesia,  a  calling  out) 
since  the  call  of  Abraham  out  from  his  country  and  his 
people  into  a  new  promise  and  possession.  It  begins 
at  every  epoch,  like  all  new  life,  in  dissociation  and  re- 
pulsion, disclosing  in  its  development  the  bond  of  at- 
traction and  association. 

This  line  is  human  before  it  is  Hebrew.  To  us  Abra- 
ham appears  as  the  first  of  the  prophets,  but  in  some 
more  primitive  faith  what  line  may  have  preceded  him 
of  men  who  heard  the  divine  voice  calling  them  out 
from  among  peoples  degenerate  in  custom  to  begin  in 


262  A  STUDY   OF  DEATH 

another  land  a  new  order,  conserving  a  seed  of  promise 
for  mankind  ?  Who  knows  what  nursery  this  earlier 
church  may  have  had,  perhaps  in  old  Accadia,  from 
which  comes  to  us  a  faint  breathing  of  the  eternal 
hope  ?  The  figure  of  Melchisedec  stands  boldly  out 
against  that  ancient  sunrise.  And,  before  all,  was  not 
the  promise  made  to  Abraham  first  made  to  Eve,  so 
that  divinity  was  bound  up  with  our  very  mortality, 
seizing  upon  "  the  seed  of  the  woman  "  in  the  begin- 
ning of  generations  ?  In  the  Gospel  of  John  all  the 
generations  of  time  bear  the  impress  of  this  hope,  and 
we  behold  the  Logos  as  the  light  of  the  world,  the 
glory  of  an  Evangel  coeternal  with  God. 

In  the  identification,  from  Eternity,  of  man  with  the 
Lord  is  held,  behind  all  veils,  the  living  meaning  of  the 
Universe. 

XVII 

But  it  is  with  Abraham  that  modern  history  begins — 
our  history,  the  warp  and  woof  of  whose  variegated 
web  may  with  more  or  less  certainty  be  traced  to  its 
original  patterns.  This  venerable  patriarch  ; 
oTthe^Type^  ^hc  friend  of  God ;  the  father  of  many  peo- 
ples besides  the  Hebrew;  the  peace-loving 
brother  ;  owner  of  flocks  and  herds  and  gold  and  silver ; 
the  victorious  warrior  honoured  of  Melchisedec ;  the  ear- 
liest of  Semitic  sojourners  in  Egypt ;  the  first  merchant 
on  record  dealing  with  money;  the  zealous  intercessor 
with  God  for  the  doomed  cities  of  Sodom  and  Gomor- 
rah ;  and  the  father  of  the  faithful,  whose  Paradise  was 
his  bosom,  represented  to  his  descendants  the  golden 


A   SINGULAR.   REy ELATION  263 

age.  David  and  Solomon  were  glorious  nieinories  to 
the  Hebrews  ,  but  the  thought  of  Abraham  carried  them 
back  beyond  their  trials  and  distresses  to  a  period  of 
calm  content  associated  with  spiritual  promise,  but  not 
with  the  fiery  furnace  through  which  they  passed  to  its 
fulfilment. 

The  long  patriarchate  was,  as  has  already  been  indi- 
cated, a  happy  preparation  for  the  peculiar  life  of  the 
children  of  Israel.  Its  background  stretched  far  back 
into  the  Bedouin  past.  The  deep  impulse  which  sent 
Abraham  forth  from  Chaldea,  instead  of  disturbing  the 
patriarchal  habit  of  tent  and  shepherd  life,  gave  it  dis- 
tinct form  and  character.  Thus  was  nourished  the 
genius  of  the  race,  and  doubtless  if  we  could  penetrate 
the  veil  which  hides  from  us  all  but  the  superficial 
aspects  of  life  in  those  early  days,  we  would  be  able 
to  note  even  there  the  singularity  afterward  so  con- 
spicuous, and,  in  the  dreams  of  the  shepherds  as  they 
watched  their  flocks  by  night,  discern  some  tokens  of 
a  mood  not  elsewhere  deepening  and  expanding,  but 
there  alone  increasing,  inbreathing,  and  infolding  God, 
and  making  for  Him  spacious  reception,  and  so  en- 
larging the  capacity  for  the  spiritual  promise— for  its 
heavenly  hope  and  its  earthly  desolation.  It  was  a 
mood  prescient  of  the  Psalmist  who  should  sing,  "The 
Lord  is  my  shepherd ;"  especially  was  it  prescient  of 
the  words  of  Isaiah  :  "  Enlarge  the  place  of  thy  tent, 
and  let  them  stretch  forth  the  curtains  of  thine  habita- 
tions ;  spare  not  :  lengthen  thy  cords,  and  strengthen 
thy  stakes." 

Time  was  given  for  this  enlargement,  for  the  expan- 
sive culture  of  the  shepherd's  dream,  full  of  the  night 


264  A  STUDY  OF  DEATH 

and  the  stars  and  God  ;  but  it  was  of  eternity  rather 
than  of  time,  so  that  the  mood  of  it  was  a  strong  hold- 
ing of  things  inwardly  precious  and  incorruptible,  and 
a  strong  withholding  from  artificial  constructions — from 
the  things  which  make  cities  and  kingdoms  and  the 
institutions  of  civilisation.  The  religious  instinct  com- 
mon to  all  peoples  was  in  these  tribes  lifted  out  of  its 
usual  plane  of  development. 

From  the  first,  then,  the  singular  type  was  set,  which, 
though  it  had  so  little  outward  stability,  was,  as  it  al- 
ways has  been  and  is  to  -  day,  the  most  insistent  and 
abiding  racial  type  on  earth.  Even  in  the  primitive 
patriarchal  era  there  was  something  more  than  a  noble 
quality  of  animal  life,  than  the  strong  instincts  of  a 
vital  manhood,  fierce  in  its  virility,  yet  with  a  natu- 
ral restraint ;  all  this  was  exalted  and  intensified  by 
that  divine  alliance  which  was  already  recognised  as 
a  reality,  the  ground  of  the  later  covenant,  embrac- 
ing a  world.  Some  special  readiness  to  receive  was 
the  basis  of  a  special  revelation,  though  the  reception 
was  in  trembling  fear  and  with  many  signs  of  repul- 
sion. They  were  themselves  gods  unto  whom  the 
word  of  the  Lord  came,  else  it  could  not  have  come ; 
some  consubstantial  flame  in  man  was  witness  to  the 
flame  of  the  spirit.  That  which  was  in  the  heart  of  the 
child  Samuel — -that  waiting  desire  which  made  him 
listen  in  the  still  night  for  the  divine  Voice — that  which 
in  the  inmost  heart  of  man  makes  it  the  bride  of  God, 
was  a  determining  element  in  the  vital  destination  of 
the  Hebrew. 

The  nomadic  shepherd  life  had  always  some  unrest. 
The  tent  was  forever  being  shifted,  if  only  for  new  past- 


A  SINGULAR  REVELATION  265 

urage  ;  but  there  was  in  this  wandering  impulse,  as 
affecting  the  early  Hebrew,  a  spiritual  disturbance  un- 
settling content,  the  expedition  of  a  mystical  pilgrim- 
age. 

As  in  all  childhood  there  is  a  heavenly  holding  and 
withholding,  which  in  some  one  child  becomes  a  special 
nurture  with  more  ample  storage  of  buoyant  hope,  a 
deeper  inbreathing  of  the  air  of  dawn,  so,  while  we  dis- 
cern in  all  race-beginnings  a  spiritual  impulse,  a  fresh 
and  living  flame  like  that  which  breathed  through  the 
Vedic  Hymns,  yet  in  the  Hebrew  origin  we  behold 
such  seizure  upon  God  that  the  divine  seems  to  be  in- 
sphered  in  the  human,  increasing  and  abounding  there 
through  the  long  morning ;  and,  though  that  which 
holds  it  so  largely  is  finally  broken,  it  is  broken  as  is 
some  precious  argosy  whose  treasure  is  bestowed  upon 
all  lands — is  indeed  the  broken  matrix  which  has  held 
Emmanuel. 

In  the  prolonged  patriarchate  was  set  the  type  of 
this  peculiar  people — the  note  to  which  it  was  held  ac- 
cordant, though  the  discords  were  many  and  violent. 
Here  were  engendered  Psalm  and  Prophecy  and  the 
Messianic  hope.  This  period  lasted  long  enough  to 
become  an  exemplar.  The  tent,  so  easily  folded  and 
removed,  was  the  foretype  of  that  earthly  instability 
which  characterised  the  fortunes  of  this  people — an 
ideal  standard  of  divestiture  to  which  the  prophet  was 
always  calling  back,  reducing  life  to  its  simplest  prin- 
ciple. The  familiar  watchword,  "To  your  tents,  O 
Israel  !"  remains  to  the  last  the  refrain  of  Hebrew  his- 
tory. 

How  difTerent  this   Hebrew  patriarchate  from  that 


266  A  STUDY   OF  DEATH 

of  the  Chinese,  which  we  see  to-day  in  the  crystaUine 
calm  where  it  has  been  held  in  arrest  for  centuries  ! 
How  different  from  the  obese  degeneration  of  the  an- 
cestral type  among  the  Bedouins  of  the  desert  !  And  as 
to  its  outcome,  we  see  clearly  how  distinct  it  is  by  com- 
paring the  Hebrew  religious  movement  with  that  which 
emerged  in  Islam  —  the  difference  between  enslave- 
ment, defeat,  and  captivity  disguising  heavenly  do- 
minion, and  that  kind  of  possession  and  conquest 
which  is  the  dissipation  of  spiritual  energy. 

The  peace  which  the  Hebrew  loved,  the  longing  for 
Avhich  led  him  inland  while  the  adventurous  Phoenician 
sought  the  mastery  of  the  sea — that  rest  besought  by 
the  Psalmist,  such  as  the  dove  seeks  in  its  flight  :  these 
stand  out  in  pathetic  contrast  against  a  troubled  career 
of  fiery  trial  and  chastisement.  It  is  just  such  a  con- 
trast that  impresses  us  in  the  personal  life  of  Jesus, 
between  the  serenity  of  Galilee— that  charmed  circle 
of  security  from  which  he  sends  forth  his  defiance  to 
Herod — and  the  fretful  tumult,  the  cruel  hostility  of 
Jerusalem.  The  deepening  of  capacity  is  for  the  larger 
inclusion  of  pain  and  strife,  as  well  as  for  that  of  a 
heavenly  peace ;  and  so  it  was  in  the  divine  life  of  the 
Son  of  Man,  who  had  not  where  to  lay  his  head,  who 
took  the  stings  and  arrows  of  every  enmity,  and  who 
not  merely  suffered  evil  and  death  but  included  all 
evil  and  all  death,  so  that  his  rising  again  might  stand 
against  all  falling.  He  descended  into  hell,  so  enlarg- 
ing the  scope  of  that  descent  that  it  emerged  in  heaven. 
Before  him,  neither  in  pagan  nor  Jewish  thought,  was 
such  emergence  conceived  as  possible,  just  as  before 
him  the  mortal  issue  was  not  seen  as  life. 


A  SINGULAR   REVELATION  267 


XVIII 

The  idea  of  heaven  as  the  eternal  habitation  of  souls 
freed  from  earthly  bondage  is  so  familiar  to  us  that 
we  are  apt  to  forget  that  it  is  wholly  a  crea- 
tion of  the  Christ-life  and  the  Christ-death,   The  Opening 

'      of  Heaven. 

followed  by  his  resurrection  and  ascension. 
The  phrase  "  going  to  heaven  "  is  strictly  modern,  and 
as  indicating  the  direct  destination  of  a  departed  spirit 
is  quite  wholly  Protestant,  since  the  great  majority  of 
Christians  believe  that  there  is  an  intermediate  state. 
To  the  martyrs,  as  to  Stephen,  heaven  seemed  to  open 
for  their  immediate  reception  ;  but  to  the  Lord  himself 
there  was  no  such  invitation.  Therefore  he  said  to  the 
penitent  thief :  "  This  day  shalt  thou  be  witii  me  in 
Paradise  " — meaning  that  happier  part  of  Sheol  allotted 
to  the  faithful.  Hitherto,  in  the  hope  of  pagan  or  of 
Jew,  the  movement  of  the  soul  had  been  arrested  at 
this  point,  as  if  by  fixed  conclusion.  The  only  He- 
brews in  heaven  were  those  who  had  been  divinely 
translated  thither — Enoch  and  Elijah,  and,  it  was  be- 
lieved, Moses  ;  besides  these,  it  was  the  abode  of  God 
only  and  the  angels. 

The  Lord  never  directly  promised  his  disciples  en- 
trance to  heaven,  though  intimating  that  in  his  Father's 
house  were  many  mansions,  and  that  he  would  prepare 
a  place  for  them — praying,  moreover,  that  where  he 
was  they  might  be  also.  The  resurrection  in  which 
the  Pharisees  believed  was  a  return  to  earthly  em- 
bodiment and  habitation.  Only  the  Lord's  ascension 
opened  heaven.     The  Gentile  Christians,  by  swift  re- 


268  A  STUDY  OF  DEATH 

action,  readily  accepted  the  idea  of  the  supreme  exalta- 
tion ;  but  the  Hebrew,  as  shown  in  the  Apocalypse  of 
St.  John,  expected  the  descent  upon  the  earth  of  a  new 
Jerusalem. 

The  idea  of  place,  in  this  connection,  has  no  impor- 
tance ;  what  is  really  significant  is  the  ascension,  as  the 
complement  of  so  deep  descent — the  escape  from  that 
old  and  sterile  conclusion  in  Hades  which  had  so  long 
impressed  the  minds  of  men  as  something  inevitable — 
the  completion  in  ineffable  light  of  the  soul's  wander- 
ing that  hitherto  seemed  to  have  been  arrested  in  dark- 
ness. The  descent  was  not  evaded  ;  death  still  awaited 
every  man,  and  the  grave  deepened  into  the  Inferno, 
but  the  cycle  was  completed,  and  what  had  been 
bounden  was  free — the  bond  itself  finally  shown  as  a 
home-bringing  of  God's  children  to  the  bosom  of 
another  Father  than  Abraham. 

It  is  interesting  to  trace  the  adumbration  of  this 
freedom  in  the  Hebrew  consciousness.  The  primitive 
thought  of  another  world  was  backward  and  downward, 
but  with  the  spirit  of  prophecy  there  was  a  turning  of 
the  face  to  the  light,  forward-looking.  After  the  Cap- 
tivity the  idea  of  angelic  beings  became  more  and 
more  familiar  to  the  Hebrew,  mingUng  with  his  hope 
of  resurrection,  though  the  angels  should  descend  to 
him  rather  than  he  should  ascend  to  their  abode.  The 
Lord  spoke  of  the  children  of  the  resurrection  as  be- 
coming like  the  angels  in  heaven.  From  this  it  was 
only  a  step  to  heaven  itself — but  that  step  halted.  Then 
there  was  that  last  week  in  Jerusalem,  with  its  gather- 
ing trouble,  relieved  by  visits  to  the  restful  home  of 
Mary  and  Martha  in  Bethany ;  the  raising  of  Lazarus, 


A  SINGULAR  REy ELATION  269 

and  the  evident  expansion  of  some  mighty  and  lu- 
minous thought  in  the  mind  of  Jesus,  prophetic,  absorb- 
ing, withholding  itself  from  expression  even  to  his  disci- 
ples, as  something  they  could  not  yet  bear  and  which  must 
await  disclosure  from  the  spirit — from  that  free  spirit 
which  was  in  him,  made  wholly  free  when  he  should 
"go  away."  Flesh  and  blood  could  not  reveal  it,  but 
rather  the  vanishing  of  these.  With  the  resurrection 
of  the  Lord — which,  though  it  only  brought  him  back  to 
the  light  of  earthly  day,  still  seemed  to  remove  him  from 
the  accustomed  familiarity,  so  that  he  only  at  times 
suddenly  appeared  to  them  for  brief  converse  and  then 
as  suddenly  vanished — their  spiritual  sense  was  deep- 
ened. Their  hearts  burned  within  them  while  he  talked 
with  them  on  the  way  to  Emmaus,  showing  them  what 
was  the  real  meaning  of  his  sufferings  and  death  and 
resurrection,  as  completing  the  divine  mission  of  Israel 
in  the  person  of  the  Messiah.  "Ought  not  Christ  to 
have  suffered  these  things  and  to  enter  into  his  glory  ?" 

The  consummation  of  the  lifting  power  of  the  life 
manifested  in  the  Christ  was  reached  in  his  ascension. 
He  who  had  "  descended  into  the  lower  parts  of  the 
earth  .  .  .  ascended  up  far  above  all  heavens,  that  he 
might  fill  all  things."  The  tree  of  Life  could  not  fill 
the  heavens  till  its  roots  had  taken  hold  of  the  nether- 
most abyss. 

Therefore  it  is  that,  for  the  Christian,  Death  and 
Evil  are  deepened  to  the  utmost,  and  in  like  manner 
the  consciousness  of  Guilt,  that  nothing  may  be  left 
outside  of  the  comprehension  of  the  lifting  Life — that 
tiie  ascent  may  "  lead  captivity  captive." 


270  A  STUDY  OF  DEATH 


XIX 

The  Hebrew  movement,  thus  consummated  in  the 
Christ-life,  represents  the  epos  of  the  human  soul,  not 
in  such  terms  as  the  ancient  poets  used  in  their  epics 
celebrating  heroic  adventure — the  quest  of 
^dea"f  sir  the  Golden  Fleece  or  the  taking  of  Troy— 
but  far  withdrawn  from  any  idea  of  mere 
outward  accomplishment  and  confined  within  the  scope 
of  a  spiritual  destiny  expressed  in  terms  of  living  guilt 
and  living  righteousness. 

Childhood  is  unmoral.  It  has  the  primary  con- 
science, whose  instinctive  feeling  is  not  expressed  in 
abstractions  or  in  such  judgments  as  are  ethical  in  our 
modern  sense.  It  has  natural  control,  a  vital  restraint, 
deeper  and  surer  than  that  which  is  concerned  with  ex- 
ternal relations  and  consequences  rationally  considered. 
The  Hebrew,  keeping  much  of  the  plasticity  of  child- 
hood, had  this  living  conscience,  not  merely  in  the 
sense  in  which  all  primitive  tribes  have  it,  but  in  that 
sense  exalted,  so  that  sin  was  felt  to  be  blood-guiltiness, 
as  violence  of  the  bond  of  kinship  between  men  and 
God.  When  the  Prophet  wished  to  convince  David  of 
his  great  sin,  he  did  not  refer  to  the  broken  law  but  to 
the  home  he  had  broken.  So  the  Lord  made  the  test 
of  a  divine  judgment  not  any  dogmatic  or  ethical  con- 
dition, but  only  tenderness  of  heart  toward  all  men  as 
toward  brethren  ;  as  if  this  were  itself  the  fulfilment 
of  the  law.  He  who  was  to  come  with  the  spirit  and 
power  of  Elias  was  to  turn  the  hearts  of  the  fathers  to 
the  children,  and  of  the  children  to  the  fathers  :  it  was 


A  SINGULAR  REV  FA.  AT  ION  271 

the  concern  of  kinship.  Paul's  definition  of  "  rehg- 
ion  pure  andundefiled  "  points  to  the  same  living  truth. 
Not  moral  perfection  but  newness  of  heart  is  the  vital 
distinction  :  the  newness  is  for  tenderness.  The  idea 
of  sin  entertained  by  the  Greek  and  Roman  was  con- 
fined to  failure,  with  reference  to  that  outward  com- 
pleteness which  was  to  them  the  chief  end  of  life. 
The  (}reek  word  for  sin  means  the  falling  short  of  a 
mark  :  some  outward  standard  is  implied.  The  older 
idea^  expressed  in  the  Latin  nc-fas,  was  originally  allied  to 
the  Hebrew  sense  of  guilt;  but  this  meaning  had  beeti 
outgrown,  surviving  only  in  the  lingering  regard  for  the 
Lares  and  Penates,  the  deities  of  the  hearth,  and  in  that 
tenderness  of  piety  which  never  became  wholly  extinct, 
and  which,  indeed,  was  the  great  softness  that,  turning 
into  manly  fibre,  was  the  basis  of  Roman  virtue  and 
mastery.  Rome  made  for  herself  a  world  of  depend- 
ent children  by  somewhat  the  same  quality  as  that 
whereby,  maintained  in  its  plasticity,  the  Hebrew  be- 
came a  Child  for  the  world. 


XX 

The  Hebrew  movement,  culminatinuj  in  the  Christ, 
was  a  discrete  destiny,  necessary,  once  and  for  all,  to  a 
singular  issue  —  to  the  Appearing,  in  time  and  in  the 
world  and  in  human  form,  of  Eternal  Light  and  Love — 
an  Appearing  so  wonderful  that  we  ask  how 

1  1    r  "^''^  Issue. 

it  could  have  been,  and  yet  so  longed  for, 

and  so  resuming  all  other  appearances  in  Nature  and 

humanitv,  as  their  central   illumination   and   essential 


272  A  STUDY  OF  DEATH 

glory,  that  we  ask  how  it  could  not  have  been  !  God 
so  loved  the  world:  the  world  so  desired  God!  Be- 
cause the  sun  is  in  the  heavens  the  waters  that  run  into 
the  sea  are  lifted  again  to  their  native  heights;  and 
so,  in  all  ways,  is  the  pulsation  of  the  physical  earth 
maintained.  How  else  could  there  be  the  full  pulsation 
of  the  spiritual  world  save  as  its  sun  responded  to  the 
desire  in  the  heart  of  man  ?  Christ  is  that  Sun.  We 
were  in  him,  though  we  knew  it  not,  and  he  appeared 
in  us  and  to  us.  He  descended  and  he  arose,  and  he 
stood  for  our  falling  and  rising,  and  we  saw  in  him 
what  we  turn  from,  as  worlds  from  their  light  and  that  to 
which,  following  the  same  old  planetary  habit,  we  for- 
ever return — what  we  deny  and  what  we  confess.  Apart 
from  this  movement,  which  had  for  its  issue  the  Eternal 
Child,  full  of  grace  and  truth,  shaping  for  us  the  lan- 
guage of  a  new  kingdom,  we  should  be  at  a  loss,  having 
no  clew  to  our  labyrinth  leading  outward  into  freedom, 
no  escape  from  our  entanglement.  That  which  is  hid- 
den could  never  have  come  to  the  light. 

To  suppose  this  movement  as  not  having  been  would 
be  to  suppose  humanity — the  ultimate  specialisation  of 
cosmic  life — to  be  completely  insulated,  an  island  from 
which  its  embosoming  ocean  could  at  no  point  be  seen. 
The  spiritual  loss  might  be  compared  to  the  sterile 
physical  existence  of  man  upon  the  earth,  supposing 
human  life  to  have  no  hidden  fountain  in  its  organic 
cell  structure  whence  proceeds  any  child.  The  new- 
ness, of  which  the  child  is  the  symbol,  is  the  charm  of 
existence,  the  charm  of  an  expansion  renewed  by  at- 
traction, of  desire  renewed  by  death.  As  in  the  rising 
again  of  the  Lord — the  "  one  si^n  given  unto  men  " — the 


A  SINGULAR  REyELATION  273 

way  of  deatli  was  seen  to  be  the  way  of  life,  this  re- 
surgence, to  the  early  Christians,  stood  for  a  new  child- 
hood ;  it  was  the  transcendent  Nativity,  whereby  they 
were  "the  children  of  the  Resurrection." 


CHAPTER    II 
THE   PAULINE    INTERPRETATION 

It  has  been  charged  against  Christianity  that  it  loolcs 
ever  toward  a  dying  Lord,  drawing  always  near  to  the 
grave,  emphasising  sin,  also,  as  it  does  mortality,  and 
clothing  itself  in  a  sorrowful  habit,  loving  rather  to 
dwell  in  the  house  of  mourning  than  in  that  of  feasting. 
This  attitude  has  been  contrasted  with  that  of  pagan 
philosophy,  which  appealed  to  aspiration  and  extolled 
virtue,  finding  the  highest  excellence  in  outward  accom- 
plishment and  inward  serenity. 

As  in  no  ancient  faith  was  there  the  exaltation  of  a 
sure  and  steadfast  hope  such  as  lifted  the  heart  of 
Israel,  so  was  there  never  such  a  sunburst  of  dawn  as 
that  which  exalted  and  illumined  the  hearts  of  the  early 
Christians.  Nevertheless  it  is  true  that  these  Chris- 
tians turned  their  faces  away  from  the  vision  of  any 
earthly  sunrise,  literally  as  well  as  figuratively  faring 
westward,  renouncing  the  hallowed  traditions  and  as- 
sociations of  the  Holy  Land,  seeking  discomfort,  court- 
ing persecution,  facing  death  in  every  Roman  am- 
phitheatre, and  leaving  upon  their  tombs  the  only 
inscriptions  of  their  faith  recoverable  from  this  period 
of  their  tribulation. 

The  Apostles  were  the  witnesses  to  an  eternal  verity, 
disclosed  in  their  Lord's  resurrection — that  death  is  in- 


THE  PAULINE  INTERPRETATION  275 

deed  the  unseen  angel  of  life,  with  wings  that  lifted  to 
heights  beyond  the  reach  of  mortal  vision  and  earthly 
aspiration.  Death  had  not  befallen  the  Lord,  but  he 
had  pursued  death,  had  clothed  himself  in  the  mortal 
habit,  and  in  its  corruptible  had  shown  its  incorruptible. 
The  followers  of  Christ,  therefore,  sought  not  safety ; 
their  pilgrimage  was  not  away  from  the  City  of  Destruc- 
tion but  through  its  flaming  streets.  To  them,  indeed, 
every  city,  every  structure  which  had  been  raised  by 
human  effort  seemed  about  to  fall.  They  were  on  fire 
within,  and  imagined  a  world  on  the  verge  of  conflagra- 
tion ;  the  framework  of  Nature  as  of  all  human  systems 
seemed  "like  an  unsubstantial  pageant"  soon  to  dis- 
appear, dissolved  in  fervent  heat.  They  built  no  church 
edifices  and  established  no  elaborately  formal  rites. 
They  took  no  active  part  in  the  social  or  political  func- 
tions of  the  world  about  them. 

St.  John's  Apocalypse  and  St.  Paul's  Epistles  disclose 
in  different  ways  the  prevailing  conviction  that  the  end 
of  things  was  at  hand.  In  John's  vision  everything 
seemed  to  vanish  before  the  "  wrath  of  the  Lamb." 
Paul  looked  for  the  speedy  emancipation  of  a  universe. 
John  saw  a  new  Jerusalem,  Paul  "  a  new  creature." 
The  Lord  had  said  that  the  Gospel  would  be  preached 
to  all  nations  before  the  end  of  the  world,  and  to  them 
the  swiftness  and  magnitude  of  the  pentecostal  revival 
seemed  the  beginning  of  a  movement  which  would  not 
halt  short  of  its  rapid  consummation.  St.  James  alone, 
with  steadfast  zeal  for  the  ritual  of  his  fathers,  was 
conservative  and  temperate  in  his  expectation,  repre- 
senting ecclesiastical  stability,  and  probably  for  this 
reason  he  gave  more  consideration  to  the  ethical  side 


276  A  STUDY   OF  DEATH 

of  a  Christian   life,   emphasising   the    value    of   good 
works. 

Each  of  these  apostles  was  mistaken  in  his  forecast 
of  the  immediate  future,  though  each,  through  the  dis- 
tinct phase  of  his  hope,  contributed  to  the  completeness 
of  that  testimony  which  is  known  to  us  as  the  "  new 
testament."  No  greater  confusion  fell  upon  Peter 
when  he  reflected  upon  his  denial  of  the  Master  than 
awaited  James  when  he  was  overtaken  by  the  destruc- 
tion of  Jerusalem  ;  and  we  can  imagine  the  consterna- 
tion of  John  if  he  could  have  foreseen  the  position  which 
was  to  be  held  in  Christendom  by  that  Rome  upon  which 
he  saw  emptied  the  vials  of  God's  wrath,  or  that  of 
Paul  if  he  could  have  followed  the  lines  of  Christian 
development  into  an  ecclesiasticism  more  elaborate  than 
that  of  Jerusalem,  and  have  seen  the  world  which  he  felt 
crumbling  beneath  his  feet  enter  upon  an  era  of  unprec- 
edented stability  in  every  field  of  human  activity. 

Paul's  thought  never  crystallised  into  either  a  philo- 
sophic or  theological  system  ;  it  was  so  close  to  a  nas- 
cent and  flaming  life  that  it  was  luminous  with  its  light 
and  plastic  to  its  creative  spirit — a  quickening  spirit 
that  impelled  his  swift  journeyings  over  the  whole  known 
world  even  to  its  westernmost  limits,  and  at  the  same 
time  gave  him  the  deepest  insight  into  the  mysteries  of 
the  Christian  faith. 

It  was  because  Paul's  faith  was  fixed  upon  the  invisi- 
ble and  the  eternal  that  the  whole  visible  universe  seemed 
to  him  so  unstable.  "  The  fashion  of  this  world  passeth 
away."  This  dissolving  view  was  ever  present  to  his 
mind,  because  he  felt  the  power  of  a  new  creation.     He 


THF.    PAULINE  INTERPRETATION  277 

dwelt  upon  death  because  his  chief  theme  was  the  res- 
urrection, and  upon  sin,  which  is  the  sting  of  death,  be- 
cause for  him  had  arisen  the  Sun  of  Righteousness.  The 
principle  of  a  new  life  dominated  his  thought.  It  was 
not  a  new  life  as  having  just  begun  to  be.  The  power 
which  raised  Christ  from  the  dead  was  the  creative 
power  from  the  beginning,  hidden  under  the  masque  of 
Nature's  bondage — hidden  also  in  the  heart  of  man.  It 
was  the  power  manifest  in  the  world  as  a  vital  pre- 
destination, not  to  be  thwarted  by  human  traditions  or 
aims ;  the  power  working  in  evil  as  well  as  in  good,  in 
the  hardness  of  Pharaoh's  heart  as  in  the  faith  of  Moses; 
the  power  of  the  law  as  well  as  the  power  of  grace. 

In  the  light  of  the  renascent  spiritual  principle,  Paul 
saw  a  new  humanity,  as  from  a  second  Adam,  and  a  new 
creation.  .\  revelation  had  been  made,  which  gave  a 
new  scope  to  human  life,  and  a  new  meaning  to  the 
universe ;  but  it  was  the  first  purpose  of  the  divine  will 
for  man  and  the  world,  though  last  in  the  e.xpress  bright- 
ness of  its  manifestation.  It  was  not  a  new  cycle  of 
human  or  cosmic  life,  but  the  completion  of  the  old  : 
the  fulfilment  of  its  divine  meaning.  The  natural  body 
was  raised  a  spiritual  body,  and  so  the  natural  man  was 
raised  a  spiritual  man,  growing  into  the  stature  of  the  per- 
fect man  in  Christ.  The  living  soul,  animating  the  flesh 
and  boasting  in  the  works  of  the  flesh,  was  disclosed  as 
the  quickening  spirit,  one  with  the  Father,  and  inspiring 
a  universal  fellowship,  which  had  been  from  everlasting 
but  was  now  for  the  first  time  luminously  real  to  human 
faith. 

Paul  regarded  human  destiny  as  inseparably  bound 
up  with  that  of  the  universe.     The  visible  world,  though 


278  A  STUDY   OF  DEATH 

imaging  tlie  spiritual,  "was  made  subject  to  vanity," 
under  the  bondage  of  corruption,  and  man,  as  a  part  of 
this  creation,  was  under  the  same  bondage,  and  there- 
fore mortal  and  sinful,  the  sting  of  death  being  sin  and 
the  strength  of  sin  the  law.  The  subjection  was  a  di- 
vine limitation  and  was  universal,  pertaining  to  all  visi- 
ble manifestation  :  it  was  not  of  the  will  of  man  but  of 
God.  As  the  whole  order,  seen  in  its  natural  operation 
in  time,  was  clothed  upon  with  the  mortal  habit,  every 
structure  being  brought  to  naught  and  thus  "subject  to 
vanity,"  so  in  humanity  there  was  a  special  death  and  a 
special  evil.  Sin  was  something  more  than  was  defina- 
ble in  particular  acts  :  it  was  a  state.  Thus  Paul  speaks 
of  Christ,  who  knew  no  sin,  as  becoming  Sin,  wholly 
identified  with  man  in  his  limitation.  Paul  emphasises 
the  descent  of  Christ,  thus  bringing  him  into  the  estate 
of  falling  man.  As  Christ  had  all  of  death,  in  its  essen- 
tial meaning,  and  yet  saw  not  its  corruption,  so  he  took 
the  inmost  reality  of  sin  in  such  wise  that  the  divinity  of 
it  was  blamelessly  transparent  in  its  humanity — its  crim- 
son ever  turning  white,  as  was  natural  in  a  life  essen- 
tially redemptive,  and  whose  blood  flowed  for  remission. 
He  was  the  reconcilement  of  sin  with  the  eternal  life. 

Thus  the  bondage  itself  came  to  be  seen  as  the  bond 
of  kinship  ;  showing  that  originally  it  was  this  in  its  di- 
vine ordinance. 

Paul  contrasts,  by  sharp  antithesis,  the  works  of  the 
law  with  the  operation  of  grace.  But  the  law  was,  at  its 
fountain,  holy — a  fatherly  commandment,  a  gracious  pro- 
vision suited  to  fallible  humanity,  and  even  with  its  thorns 
hedging  in  the  truant  nature,  pricking  the  conscience, 
convincing  of  sin.     While  it  hardened  with  the  hardness 


THE  PAULINE  INTERPRETATION  279 

of  the  human  heart,  and  the  men  who  sat  in  Moses' 
seat  laid  upon  the  people  burdens  too  grievous  to  be 
borne;  while  it  became  itself  a  part  of  the  bondage, 
yielding  to  corruption,  so  that  the  works  of  the  law  par- 
took of  the  vanity  of  all  outward  accomplishment ;  yet 
this  very  inanition  was  a  preparation  for  the  gospel  of 
grace.  Thus  the  law  was  a  schoolmaster  leading  men 
to  Christ. 

To  Paul's  vision  was  opened  a  spring-time  for  the 
whole  world,  with  issues  unforeseen,  indeed,  and  im- 
measurable, but  whose  meaning  had  been  fully  dis- 
closed. A  new  principle,  hitherto  hidden  beneath  the 
mortal  masque,  was  manifest.  The  followers  of  Christ 
need  not  turn  away  from  death,  or  regret  any  outward 
desolation,  however  complete  the  divestiture.  Death 
could  not  bankrupt  life,  being  indeed  its  only  solvency  ; 
though  it  stripped  the  soul  of  its  investment  of  good 
works  as  of  all  other  vesture,  the  nakedness  was  that  of 
the  child  of  the  kingdom  of  grace ;  this  absolution 
took  no  note  of  works  of  merit  any  more  than  of  any 
other  works.  This  death,  moreover,  unmasquing  all  else, 
put  aside  also  its  own  disguise,  repudiating  mortality. 
But  for  this  absolute  newness  there  could  be  no  deliv- 
erance from  the  body  of  death. 

So  significant  was  the  resurrection  of  Christ  to  Paul : 
the  revelation  of  a  new  death  hidden  in  the  old,  even 
as  the  spiritual  principle  is  hidden  in  the  visible  world. 
What  was  implicit  in  the  bondage  had  become  explicit, 
a  manifest  redemption.  A  body  inviolable  and  incor- 
ruptible had  been  returned  from  the  grave,  raised  by  a 
power  which  lifted  it  out  of  the  closed  circle  of  mor- 
tal change  and  progression  in  which  the  visible  world 


28o  A  STUDY  OF  DEATH 

seemed  locked  —  even  lifted  it  up  into  heaven.  The 
suspense  was  broken.  This  revelation  had  been  made 
not  in  an  analogue,  or  symbol  appealing  to  the  mind, 
but  in  an  appearance  to  the  sense — like  a  flash  of  the 
Eternal  into  Time  —  of  a  spiritual  body.  Thus  was 
shown  the  fashion  of  the  world  to  come,  into  which  all 
vanishing  things  were  transformed,  so  that  the  univer- 
sality of  death  was  the  hope  of  the  universe. 

It  was  not  merely  the  illumination  of  a  truth,  but 
became  a  living,  working  principle.  In  its  light  the 
Christian  could  not  only  face  death,  but  anticipate  it 
by  the  inclusion  of  it  in  life,  and  thus  bring  into  earth- 
ly manifestation  the  power  of  the  resurrection,  lift- 
ing up  the  spiritual  man  just  as  the  nutrition  and 
function  of  the  physical  man  were  from  the  inclusion 
of  death  for  the  resurgence  and  ascension  of  the  or- 
ganism. 

This  anticipation  of  death  was  the  essential  condi- 
tion of  a  new  life,  in  a  Christian  fellowship,  on  earth. 
If  the  Kingdom  of  God  was  to  have  an  earthly  realisa- 
tion, it  must  be  through  dying  daily,  both  for  minis- 
tering and  to  be  ministered  unto.  To  become  like 
children,  after  this  new  type  of  childhood,  meant  a 
withdrawal  from  the  world  for  spiritual  expansion  at 
the  same  time  that  contacts  with  that  world  were  mul- 
tiplied— channels  for  freely  receiving  and  then  for  free- 
ly giving.  Baptism  was  a  burial  with  Christ  that  the 
Christian  might  rise  again  with  him,  lifted  up  by  the 
same  spirit.  The  burial  and  the  rising,  begun  in  this 
symbolic  rite,  were  repeated  continually  in  the  pulsa- 
tion of  Christian  life — the  vanishing  side  of  which  was 
a  hiding  with  Christ,  the  return  beat  spiritually  vital- 


THE  P/IULINE  INTERPRET^lTlOhl  281 

ising  the  outward  body  of  the  individual  and  social 
organism.  On  the  one  side  the  flesh  was  denied,  on 
the  other  it  was  made  the  temple  of  God,  and  upon  the 
heart  of  flesh  was  freshly  inscribed  the  law  in  its  origi- 
nal terms  of  love. 

The  formal  obedience  of  the  law  in  every  point  could 
not  in  itself  secure  deliverance  from  its  bondage;  might, 
indeed,  result  in  self-complacency  and  pharisaical  self- 
justification,  the  very  habit  of  such  obedience  becom- 
ing automatic  routine,  and  ending  in  a  stoical  accept- 
ance of  death.  In  this  fulfilment  the  law  destroyed 
itself,  became  crystallised  in  a  heart  of  stone,  losing  its 
proper  virtue  in  a  life  thus  arrested,  and  death  would 
be  liberation  only  as  breaking  up  the  brittle  structure 
and  so  forcing  the  final  confession  of  a  corruption  re- 
sisted and  denied  but  inevitable.  On  the  other  hand, 
the  willing  acceptance  of  the  mortal  state,  its  burdens 
and  its  bondage,  by  the  tender  hearts  of  God's  children, 
judging  not,  repudiating  merit,  failing  at  every  point,  as 
fail  they  must,  yet  having  faith  in  the  Father's  love,  and 
lifted  from  every  fall  by  His  grace  into  living  righteous- 
ness— this  obedience  is  that  love  which  fulfils  the  law, 
eclipsing  and  transcending  its  letter,  and  rising  into  its 
spirit.  Thus  are  all  systems,  whatever  virtue  they  may 
have,  urged  on  to  their  mortal  issue  for  the  regenera- 
tion of  goodness  itself. 

The  quickness  of  life,  including  death  as  itself  a 
quickness,  a  lifting  and  transforming  power,  was  re- 
creative, making  a  new  or  newly  visible  organisation 
of  humanity  in  a  spiritual  body — a  fellowship  setting 
up  new  activities,  nutritive  and  functional.     As  in  the 


282  A   STUDY  OF  DEATH 

animal  organism  the  maintenance,  through  nutrition, 
of  vital  activity  depends  largely  upon  nitrogen,  the 
most  inert  of  all  elements  (excepting  the  recently 
discovered  argon,  an  equally  important  constituent  of 
the  air  we  breathe),  so  the  spiritually  organic  body 
includes  for  its  nutrition  the  death  and  inertia  of  the 
human  world.  Its  catholic  kinship  includes  the  out- 
cast, the  reprobate,  the  utterly  condemned,  finding  in 
the  extremity  of  human  wretchedness  and  sin  the  point 
of  penitent  return. 

It  was  God's  pleasure  in  humanity  that  was  the 
burden  of  the  angels'  song  announcing  to  the  shep- 
herds the  birth  of  Jesus ;  and  we  may  without  pre- 
sumption interpret  the  heavenly  voice  declaring  at 
Christ's  baptism,  "  This  is  my  beloved  Son,  in  whom 
I  am  well  pleased,"  as  especially  emphasising  the  ut- 
terance already  made  to  the  shepherds,  and  as  cele- 
brating the  new  birth  of  humanity. 

We  can  imagine  the  change  which  came  over  the 
spirit  of  man's  dream  concerning  himself  and  his 
earthly  station  when  the  Copernican  astronomy  dis- 
closed the  fact  that  what  had  been  thought  the  flat 
and  inert  earth — a  condemned  world,  the  degraded 
footstool  of  the  universe,  the  alone  dead  and  motion- 
less, and  enclosing  death  and  hell  in  its  secret  depths, 
as  if  these  were  its  own  peculiar  possession — was  it- 
self one  of  the  celestial  spheres,  and  so  restored  to  its 
heavenly  place  and  motion,  no  longer  excommunicate. 
That  catholicity  which  included  it  in  the  universal 
harmony  made  also  a  catholic  distribution  of  such 
evil  as  had  seemed  its  singular  portion,  and  its  cen- 
tral fires  were  seen  to  be  like  those  which  tormented 


THE  PAULINE  INTERPRETATION  2 S3 

the  bosoms  of  all  the  celestial  wanderers.  In  the 
catholic  life  was  included  the  catholicity  of  death. 

How  much  more  glorious  was  the  revelation  through 
the  Son  of  Man  of  the  divine  spiritual  kinship,  into 
whose  bond  was  turned  the  bondage  of  every  creature ! 
Man,  the  most  fallible  of  all  living  beings,  and  who  so 
accumulated  death  and  evil  that  he  seemed  to  monopo- 
lise corruption  and  to  be  inert — "dead  in  trespasses 
and  sins" — was  shown  to  be,  because  most  lost,  the 
best  beloved. 

The  charm  and  excellence  of  this  new  creation  could 
not  be  expressed  in  the  terms  of  physical  sensibility, 
of  mental  appreciation,  or  even  of  ethical  motives  and 
restraints.  All  the  sensations  possible  to  the  most  ex- 
quisite bodily  organism,  heightened  by  aesthetic  and 
intellectual  refinement ;  the  sum  of  attainable  power 
and  virtue :  these  belonged  to  a  world  which  had 
dwindled  into  insignificance  in  the  presence  of  a  king- 
dom whose  activities  were  characterised  by  Paul  as 
"  the  works  of  the  spirit."  The  law  of  altruistic  ser- 
vice and  sacrifice  had  belonged  to  every  order  of  exist- 
ence, and  belonged  also  to  the  new,  but  was  distinctive 
to  the  latter  only  through  its  heavenly  transformation 
and  reversion  from  the  measurable  merit  and  value, 
hitherto  associated  with  its  human  expression,  to  the 
original  and  immeasurable  grace  which  is  the  quality 
of  a  creative  act.  The  Lord,  as  the  bridegroom  of 
humanity,  lifts  it  into  participation  with  himself  in 
creative  action,  and  in  this  conjugal  relation  human- 
ity is  no  limited  saintly  company,  but  a  catholic  and 
spontaneous  fellowship. 

All  were  under  sin,  and  in  all  the  new  creation  was 


284  A  STUDY  OF  DEATH 

redemptive,  "especially  in  them  that  believed.'"  While 
the  tree  is  known  by  its  fruits,  and  the  early  Christians 
showed  an  outward  excellence  beyond  the  require- 
ments of  law  and  duty,  yet  those  loving  believers  at- 
tached no  merit  to  such  performance,  and,  having 
done  all,  deemed  themselves  unworthy,  and  as  falling 
short  of  the  divine  glory  revealed  to  their  anointed 
eyes.  No  sum  of  deeds  could  fill  out  the  measure  of  a 
life  which  was  supremely  Being  above  all  Doing.  The 
deed  could  not  seem  to  them  other  than  decrepit,  like 
the  blossom  that  withers  and  the  fruit  that  falls.  They 
tried  with  glowing  lips  to  tell  men  what  the  new  crea- 
tive principle  was,  but  none  could  understand  who 
had  not  their  spiritual  experience.  Paul  said  it  was 
Love,  and  then  described  every  known  manifestation  of 
love  as  falling  short  thereof ;  for  how  is  one  to  know 
Love  save  in  the  wonder  of  what  it  is  above  all  it  can 
do  ?  It  is  a  creative  power,  but  the  creature  falls  into 
impotence. 

As  a  social  power,  in  its  primitive  manifestation, 
Christianity  converted  altruism  into  identification.  The 
neighbor  was  loved  not  as  another,  but  as  the  self  of 
the  lover.  Sacrifice  was  the  blending  of  the  human 
with  the  divine  will ;  not  renunciation  for  mere  loss  or 
divestiture,  but  for  recovery.  Suffering  was  incident- 
ally, and  in  the  sequence  of  things  in  time,  a  discipline, 
but  in  the  eternal  meaning  was  one  with  the  divine  ■ 
passion  from  the  beginning,  and  as  belonging  to  a  liv- 
ing creation.  Death  and  sin  were  involved  in  the 
resurrection  and  redemption  whereby  man  became  a 
new  creature. 

Paul's  idea  of  dying  to  sin  was  not  that  of  ascetic 


THB  PAULINE   INTERPRETATION  285 

mortification  ;  he  meant  thereby  a  dying  to  the  dying 
environment  of  the  old  creature  and  living  to  that  of 
the  new.  Instead  of  escaping  from  a  sinful  world,  he 
sought  every  possible  contact  with  it,  knowing  that 
where  sin  abounded  there  did  grace  much  more  abound. 
The  seed  of  the  kingdom  was  sown  in  corruption. 

Thus  the  Christ-life  took  possession  of  the  world 
with  no  dainty  selection,  but,  seizing  upon  the  worst, 
brought  out  of  it  an  excellence  far  exceeding  what  had 
been  found  in  the  best.  Only  a  creative  and  trans- 
forming life,  drawing  its  inspiration  from  a  heavenly 
source,  could  have  so  confidently  leaned  to  all  human 
moods,  following  them  into  their  faltering  descents,  in- 
dulgent and  compassionate.  Thus  primitive  Christian- 
ity followed  the  pagan  world  into  its  own  Sacred  Mys- 
teries. Paul  used  the  very  terms  associated  with  these 
for  the  illustration  of  spiritual  truth.  The  pagan  con- 
verts were  baptised  under  a  formula  conveying  the 
thought  so  familiar  to  them,  and  so  repugnant  to  the 
Hebrew,  of  a  diversified  divine  manifestation  in  three 
persons. 

Paul  as  the  apostle  to  the  Gentiles,  as  "  all  things  to 
all  men,"  turned  his  face  quite  away  from  Jerusalem 
and  toward  the  Western  world.  In  his  catholicity  was 
that  world  fully  embraced,  while  in  his  doctrine  of  elec- 
tion was  expressed  the  principle  of  integration,  the 
principle  of  the  church  militant  in  the  development  of 
Christendom. 


CHAPTER    III 
CHRISTENDOM 


The  nihilism  of  the  mystic,  if  cherished  for  its  own 
sake,  would  be  disintegration,  refusing  investiture,  a 
sterile  simplicit}^ 

The  idea  that  we  should  attain  supreme  felicity  if  we 
could  put  aside  all  veils  forever  and  in  a  pure  spiritual 
vision  always  behold  God  face  to  face  is  a  dazzling 
conjecture.  Suppose  a  planet  to  be  able  to  refuse 
separation  from  her  sun,  would  her  eternal  identifica 
tion  with  her  lord  be  any  true  union — like 

Espousals.  .  .  ..,,,.,, 

the  "  union  m  partition  which  she  enjoys 
in  all  her  varied  life  ?  Or,  if  she  might  choose,  having 
set  out  upon  her  wanderings,  to  retain  her  similitude 
to  him — to  be  forever  self-luminous,  herself  always  just 
another  sun,  would  she  not,  through  lack  of  contra- 
diction, miss  the  ultimate  dramatic  excellence  and  de- 
light of  her  destiny  ? 

For,  see  what  happens  to  the  Earth  because  of  her 
apparent  loss  and  self-desolation.  Coming  into  her  hard 
limitations,  she  has  the  inestimable  honour  of  preparing 
a  bridal  chamber  for  the  Sun,  being  nearer  and  dear- 
er to  her  lord  in  her  set  distance  than  if  she  had  for- 
ever rested  in  his  bosom,  for  now  he  rests  in  hers.     As 


CHRISTENDOM  287 

the  mother  cell  is  separate  from  the  father  cell,  so  that 
the  latter  must  go  forth,  like  a  hunter  to  the  chase,  to 
possess  its  sundered  mate,  so  it  is  in  this  mystical 
attraction,  first  seen  as  repulsion,  which  is  the  charm 
that  binds  the  Earth  to  her  bridegroom. 

Has  she  pride  that  she,  as  it  seems  to  her,  is  the  cen- 
tre and  he  the  satellite  ?  Or,  rather,  is  it  her  modesty 
that  she  imputes  to  herself  all  the  inertia  and  to  him 
all  the  motion  ?  Really  the  motion  is  of  neither  to  the 
other  as  to  a  centre,  but  both  are  possessed  by  the  same 
motion,  which  is  not  material  but  of  the  spirit.  Their 
union  is  but  the  expression  of  the  eternal  consubstan- 
tiation. 

The  gain  of  this  planetary  bride,  the  Earth,  is  through 
what  she  has  given  up.  Because  of  her  distance  she 
can  be  visited  by  her  lord.  Divesting  herself  of  her 
own  garment  of  light,  she  can  be  clothed  upon  with 
his  ;  hiding  her  own  fires,  she  can  be  sensible  of  his 
joyous  warmth  in  manifold  intimacy.  Brought  to 
very  barrenness  in  the  diminution  of  her  own  force 
and  swiftness,  it  is  given  her  to  sing  the  virgin's  Afag- 
nificat^  and  to  know  that  all  born  of  her  are  the  chil- 
dren of  the  Sun.  There  is  healing  in  his  touch, 
and  all  that  she  perforce  distils  of  poison  and  bitter- 
ness— all  the  maladies  of  her  desolate  nights — yield  to 
his  radiant  strength.  With  her  he  sups  and  takes  up 
his  abode,  knowing  no  delight  or  charm  in  the  vast 
distance  traversed  by  his  swift  wings  until  he  keeps 
tryst  with  her.  Here  only,  and  not  in  that  blank 
space,  has  his  face  brightness  and  colour  ;  here  only 
is  there  for  him  nutrience  and  increase  and  content. 
This  is  the  garden  of  his  love  ;  of  his  labour,  also,  since 


288  A  STUDY   OF  DEATH 

here  are  done  his  mighty  works  for  his  children ;  and 
of  his  deatli,  since  virtue  goes  out  of  him  with  every 
revival  of  earthly  life,  until  he  wears  the  wan  smile  of 
the  physician  who  saves  not  himself — like  the  sunset 
benediction  in  the  face  of  Heracles  when,  after  his 
grim  struggle,  he  brought  Alcestis  back  to  the  halls  of 
Admetus,  having  himself  taken  the  chill  and  the  mys- 
terious silence. 

So  is  it  with  all  espousals.  The  union  is  because  of 
divulsion,  and  has  the  value  of  distance ;  its  intimacies 
have  their  ground  in  distinction,  which  becomes  con- 
tradiction, like  that  of  a  planet  to  its  sun  ;  its  special 
activities  and  capacities  seek  sequestration  in  a  limited 
field,  "an  enclosed  garden,"  sometimes  curtained  in  by 
the  darkness  and  again  veiled  by  the  light;  its  investi- 
ture is  mortal  and  its  fruition  is  death. 

The  spiritual  espousal,  wherein  humanity  is  united 
with  the  Lord,  is  not  only  catholic,  including  all  the 
elements  in  a  human  world,  but,  whatever  may  be  its 
heavenly  consummation,  is,  in  its  earthly  expression 
and  as  a  visible  manifestation,  a  limited  estate,  involv- 
ing conditions  such  as  attend  all  other  espousals  :  on 
the  Bride's  part  a  destination  separating  her  from  the 
Bridegroom,  and  in  many  ways  seeming  a  contradiction 
of  her  inmost  desire  for  Him,  so  that  she  becomes  a 
poor  starveling,  a  distraught  and  desolate  Psyche,  be- 
reft of  Love ;  and  on  the  part  of  the  Bridegroom  a  run- 
ning after  her,  as  if  in  answer  to  some  great  need  and 
hunger  developed  in  her  desolation,  as  if  He  had  in- 
dulged her  aversion  that  He  might  follow  her  into  her 
darkest  hiding,  standing  at  her  door  and  knocking  while 


CHRISTENDOM  2  89 

His  locks  are  wet  with  the  cold  dews  of  her  night — He 
also  having  veiled  His  essential  might  and  brightness 
lest  she  should  be  dismayed  at  His  coming,  yet  re- 
taining enough  of  His  original  majesty  that  she  may 
see  Him  as  the  one  altogether  lovely,  the  wonderful. 

Such,  at  least,  is  the  modest  human  regard  of  this 
spiritual  marriage,  which  includes  and  transcends  all 
the  other  espousals  for  which  the  world  is  made  :  the 
Bride  taking  upon  her  all  the  blame,  the  reproach  of 
her  very  destiny.  This  has  been  the  cry  of  the  human 
soul  since  its  bondage  began  :  Mine  is  the  shame,  the 
low  estate ;  there  is  none  good  but  the  One.  But  all 
ways  the  Bridegroom  answered  :  Fear  not,  in  thee  only 
is  My  delight ;  Mine  is  the  darkness  and  the  evil,  and 
no  glory  belongs  to  Me  that  is  not  also  thine.  These 
are  the  everlasting  Canticles. 

This  similitude  of  a  conjugal  relation  between  man 
and  the  Lord  has  been  a  symbol  familiar  to  the  re- 
ligious thought  of  the  race  in  all  ages,  from  the  Vedic 
Hymns  to  Swedenborg,  and  is  especially  frequent  in 
Hebrew  prophecy.  Science  shows  that  all  cosmic  life 
is  expressed  through  repulsions  turned  into  attractions 
and  affinities  —  what  seems  repulsion  being  itself  an 
undisclosed,  or  hidden,  attraction  ;  and  if  we  substi- 
tute living  terms  for  these,  we  see  that  universally  Nat- 
ure is  the  harmony  of  conjugal  associations,  in  all  of 
which  the  primary  note  seems  to  emphasise  disjunc- 
tion. 


290  A  STUDY  OF  DEATH 


II 

Now  when  the  Bridegroom  was  seen  as  Emmanuel, 

in  whom  were  manifest  the  power  and  wisdom  of  crea- 

^     .  tive  Life  that  had  been  hidden  beneath  veils 

Continuance 

of  the       through  which  now  it  shone;  when  he  was 
on  age.     j-jgj^jjpg  j-j-,g  gj^.],  ^j-j^j  niakiug  the  blind  to  see 

and  releasing  the  captives  of  every  earthly  bondage,  it 
seemed  then  to  those  who  witnessed  these  things  that 
the  bondage  itself  was  ended.  "  If  thou  hadst  been 
here,  our  brother  would  not  have  died,"  said  the  two 
sisters  of  Lazarus.  And  seeing  in  him  this  Life  as  not 
only  curative  but  redemptive,  men  said  that  now  there 
need  be  no  more  sin,  since  here  was  a  living  stream 
which  turned  its  scarlet  white. 

But  while  they  were  saying  this  the  Bridegroom  said, 
"  I  must  go  away." 

So  the  sun  had  nightly  left  the  Earth  to  her  dark- 
ness and  yearly  to  her  winter,  since  the  Night  and  the 
Winter  had  their  own  work  to  do  with  the  Earth — the 
very  complement  of  his. 

When  the  Lord  left  men  to  their  old  bondage  of 
death  and  sin ;  left  even  those  whom  he  had  healed  or 
raised  from  the  dead  to  yet  again  sicken  and  die — it 
was  evident  that  it  was  no  part  of  his  mission  to  abol- 
ish the  captivity  or  to  reverse  the  lines  of  development 
in  the  world  or  in  man  as  connected  with  the  world. 
As  we  have  seen,  the  creative  life  manifest  in  him  was 
a  singular  illumination  of  what  this  life  had  been  doing 
in  the  world  and  in  man  ;  it  was  a  revelation  of  the 
truth  hidden  in  the  bondage  itself,  and  to  be  expressed 


CHRISTENDOM  291 

only  in  its  fulfilment ;  and  since  it  was  the  life  of  the 
Father  in  him,  it  was  something  more  than  a  disclosure, 
transforming  man's  view  of  his  finite,  mortal,  and  sinful 
state  :  before  it  could  be  this  marvellous  revelation,  it 
must  be  creative  in  the  human  heart,  making  therein  a 
kingdom,  whose  principle  was  a  working  power  in  the 
world,  having,  indeed,  a  worldliness  of  its  own  in  a  visi- 
ble social  organism,  and  at  the  same  time  making  for 
heavenliness  —  for  an  estate  native  to  man  as  the 
child  of  God  and  the  heir  to  eternal  life,  for  a  king- 
dom not  of  this  world.  It  was  to  be  at  once  an  earthly 
unfolding  and  a  heavenly  involution.  It  was  for  this  in- 
volution that  the  Bridegroom  must  go  away.  There  was 
a  World  to  Come,  a  new  habit  and  habitation,  a  trans- 
formed Bridegroom  accordingly.  "I  go  to  prepare  a 
place  for  you."  The  new  expansion  involved  new 
distance.  "  And  I,  if  I  be  lifted  up,  will  draw  all  men 
unto  me."  Moreover,  for  the  completion  of  his  revela- 
tion he  must  show  not  only  the  creative  life,  but  that 
Death  is  creative.  He  must  die  for  resurrection — to 
give  the  note  of  the  new  harmony,  the  theme  of  the 
spiritual  life. 

If  the  Lord  had  remained  forever,  continuing  his 
manifestation  of  the  Creative  life,  annulling  sickness 
and  death  and  sin,  as  well  as  all  natural  evil,  instead  of 
unmasquing  all  these,  then  all  the  discords  attendant 
upon  this  harmony,  which  is  the  one  known  to  us  here, 
would  have  been  resolved  not  positively  but  by  nega- 
tion. The  harmony  itself  would  be  confined  within  its 
own  null  perfection,  with  no  openness  to  a  World  to 
Come.  It  would  have  been  an  arrest  of  creation  ;  nay, 
more,  it  would  have  been  a  consummate  illustration  of 


292  A  STUDY   OF  DEATH 

the  folly  of  creation  itself,  which  eternally  includes 
the  Evil,  and  in  every  new  specialisation — in  human 
existence  most  of  all — accumulating  and  exaggerating 
the  Evil. 


Ill 

There  must  be  the  full  human  comprehension  of 
Evil,  like  the  divine  comprehension,  before  we  can  un- 
derstand that  our  inheritance  of  the  earth  is  of  all  des- 
tinies known  to  us  the  most  glorious — the  ultimate  ex- 
pression, so  far  as  we  yet  know,  of  the  divine  will  and 
^,    „.,^       pleasure.     The  sense  of  this  is  our  only  as- 

The  Hidden      '^  ■' 

Glory  of  our  suraucc  of  a  morc  glorious  world  to  come, 
y  '  '^'  For  what  hope  have  we  if  the  Father's  work 
hitherto  has  so  far  miscarried  that  redemption  must 
mean  the  reversal  of  its  whole  procedure  in  Time  ? 
Surely  we  derive  no  help  or  consolation  from  the  belief 
that  either  fallen  man  or  fallen  angels  have  been  able 
to  oppose  His  will  with  even  temporary  success. 

The  difficulty  or  problem  is  not  in  the  divine  crea- 
tion, but  in  our  partial  conception  of  it.  What  seems 
to  us  an  opposition  or  resistance  to  the  divine  will  is  an 
essential  element  in  its  operation.  There  is  no  reason- 
ableness in  the  supposition  that  God  created  Evil  in  or- 
der that  He  might  destroy  it,  or  that  the  specialisation  of 
life  should  have  its  ultimate  issue  in  a  human  conscious- 
ness involving  not  merely  fallibility,  but  falling,  as  the 
very  condition  of  its  progress,  in  order  that  He  might 
redeem  man  from  that  estate.  Evil  is  not  for  the  sake 
of  Good.  While  it  is  true  that  life  is  from  death,  that 
good  comes  from  evil,  and  that  pain  is  a  discipline,  yet 


CHRISTENDOM  293 

these  issues  are  no  adequate  explication  of  death,  evil, 
and  pain.  Our  idea  of  the  good  is  as  partial  as  that  of 
the  evil,  and  the  deeper  our  insight  the  more  difficult  it 
becomes  to  separate  the  one  from  the  other,  each  in- 
deed being  comprehensible  only  in  terms  of  the  other ; 
in  a  vision  perfectly  whole  Evil  would  be  seen  to  be  the 
other  name  of  Good.  In  the  series  of  creative  special- 
isations the  more  advanced  and  complex  existence 
multiplies  and  emphasises  all  that  goes  under  either 
name,  not  because  evil  is  necessary  to  good  or  good  to 
evil,  but  because  the  reality  underlying  either  concep- 
tion is  essential  and  eternal — proper  to  Life.  Lucifer 
is  Light-bearer,  the  morning  star,  and  whatever  disguises 
he  may  take  in  falling,  there  can  be  no  new  dawn 
that  shall  not  witness  his  rising  in  his  original  bright- 
ness. 

Nothing  can  be  whole,  or  positively  holy,  which  does 
not  include  evil,  the  negation  of  which  would  also  annul 
goodness.  We  say  that  God  makes  the  wrath  of  man 
to  praise  Him  :  aye,  and  but  for  wrath,  human  and  di- 
vine, there  would  be  neither  praise  nor  praiseworthiness. 
Hate  is  Love's  other  name,  as  Evil  is  that  of  Good. 

Christ  came  not  to  destroy  or  to  reverse  the  Father's 
work,  but  to  fulfil  it. 

In  the  bewilderment  of  our  Garden,  so  enclosed, 
whose  springs  are  hidden  and  whose  fountains  sealed, 
where  we  have  eaten  of  one  tree  while  a  sword  guards 
the  other ;  where  Love  takes  on  the  masques  of  an- 
ger and  hate,  emphasising  division  and  strife  ;  where 
pleasure  begins  and  ends  in  pain  ;  where  motion  begins 
in  disturbance  and  ends  in  ruin ;  and  where  the  ad- 
vance of  life  and  the  enhancement  of  its  charms  are 


294  A  STUDY   OF  DEATH 

through  the  more  and  more  complicate  involvement  of 
bondage,  through  the  multiplication  of  perils  and  solic- 
itudes, and  through  a  constantly  increasing  capacity 
for  the  inclusion  of  death  as  well  as  an  accumulation 
outwardly  of  the  mortal  structure  and  fabric  :  in  this 
estate  the  stress  and  travail  are  conspicuous,  and  the 
glory  of  our  existence  is  hidden.  But  it  is  only  that 
the  Bridegroom  may  surprise  us,  shining  through  every 
fold  of  our  heavy  vesture,  lifting  the  clouds  in  our 
sky,  lightening  our  burdens,  disclosing  the  redemptive 
course  of  evil  and  unmasquing  death.  To  His  vision 
the  glory  of  our  earthly  life  is  ever  open,  tempting  Him 
to  share  it  (as  it  does  the  angels),  and  leading  Him  on 
to  His  incarnation.  We  look  upon  this  glory  in  Him 
as  a  divine  disclosure,  but  it  is  a  re-presentation  to  us 
of  our  humanity,  and  He  stands  for  us  and  falls  for  us, 
in  our  image,  so  that  we  may  comprehend  our  standing 
and  falling,  in  His  image. 

Redemption  is  the  other  name  of  creation — the  lu- 
minous reflection  and  complement  of  all  in  creative 
specialisation  that  we  call  evil. 


IV 

The  bondage,  then,  is  continued  and  completed  in 
the  spiritual  organisation  which  we    know   as    Chris- 
tendom, and  which  is  the  coming  in  all  flesh 
Fallibility  in    of  the   Kingdom    whose  principle   was   ex- 
Chnstian  Ex-  pressed    in   the   Lord  incarnate — expressed 

penence. 

for  what  it  is  essentially,  as  the  principle 
of  an  eternal  life. 


CHRISTENDOM  295 

The  Bridegroom  was  always  visiting  humanity  before 
He  came  in  the  flesh,  and  always  had  a  spiritual  king- 
dom in  human  hearts.  After  His  ascension,  in  a  body 
already  adumbrating  that  wherewith  all  the  Children  of 
the  Resurrection  shall  hereafter  be  clothed,  He  was  still 
a  real  presence  in  His  earthly  kingdom — a  kingdom  in- 
cluding all  the  evil  of  the  world  and  all  that  belongs  to 
man  in  his  sinful  and  mortal  estate.  Even  the  regen- 
erate, while  in  the  flesh,  retain  the  fallibility  which  hu- 
manity has  had  from  the  beginning  :  only  it  has  for 
them  its  full  meaning.  The  increase  and  progression  of 
the  spiritual  life  in  all  outward  embodiment  and  devel- 
opment is  a  planetary  wandering,  a  prodigal  exile,  show- 
ing often  a  ragged  vesture,  and  full  of  repentances. 
The  authority  of  this  life,  being  one  with  its  growth, 
does  not  exclude  but  depends  upon  the  human  fallibil- 
ity.    It  is  an  experience. 

The  ecclesiastical  not  less  than  the  secular  history  of 
Christendom  is  an  illustration  of  fallibility  as  a  condi- 
tion of  progress.  The  movement  is  a  succession  of 
nights  and  mornings,  of  stumblings  and  ascents.  Al- 
ways the  aversion  from  the  Bridegroom  is  followed  by 
a  fuller  reception  of  Him.  Often  it  seems  that  Christ 
is  asleep  in  his  disciples'  bark  while  the  storm  is  brew- 
ing :  nevertheless,  the  storm  is  his  as  is  the  calm. 


In  the  Christian  world  outside  of  the  ecclesiastical 
system  all  development  seems  to  contradict  the  Ser- 
mon on  the  Mount,  and  this    opposition    follows   the 


296  A  STUDY  OF  DEATH 

laws  of  life  expressed  in  all  organic  structure  and  func- 
tioning since  the  world  began.     Only  thus 

Contradiction     ,  /-^u    •    ,-■       ■ ..  ■    t.    ■      -4-  •    ,. 

j,ci,g       does  Christianity  maintain  its  existence  as  a 
System  to  its  vvorking  DOwcr  in  human  society.    The  kins:- 

Priiiciple.  ^  ^  ... 

dom  of  God  on  earth  is  an  integration — not 
merely  an  inward  wholeness,  as  it  was  in  the  singular 
destiny  of  the  Hebrew  people,  but  an  outward  organ- 
isation seeking  completeness  in  polity,  art,  philosophy, 
and  ethics  ;  and  the  more  earnestly  it  pursues  these 
lines  the  more  it  has  of  inward  grace,  vitality,  and  il- 
lumination. The  glory  of  Christianity  is  chiefly  mani- 
fest in  that  it  is  a  continually  lifting  and  transforming 
power  notwithstanding  its  inclusion  of  evil,  nay,  by 
virtue  thereof,  since  no  new  ascent  is  made  save  through 
descent  and  apparent  recession. 

Christian  peoples  accept  the  vital  principle  illumi- 
nated by  Hebrew  prophecy  and  by  the  life  and  teach- 
ings of  Jesus,  but  they  do  not  repeat  the  process  through 
which  that  luminous  revelation  was  vouchsafed  to  them. 
Rather  they  appear  to  contradict  it,  seeking  especially 
that  outward  excellence  and  accomplishment  which  were 
denied  to  the  Hebrew  exemplar.  Nor  does  the  indi- 
vidual Christian  repeat  the  divestiture  of  the  Lord's 
life.  He  follows,  but  he  avoids  the  exact  similitude. 
The  original  exemplar,  bringing  into  clear  light  what 
had  been  hidden,  would  have  been  marred  and  con- 
fused by  that  outward  fabric  and  equipment  which  had 
always  been  its  obscuration,  Emphasis  given  to  even 
the  outward  moral  habit  would  have  disguised  the  light  of 
life.  Nevertheless,  the  very  elements  which  would  have 
blurred  the  central  light — which  had  indeed  hidden  it 
from  the  beginning,  and  which  will  continue  to  veil  it  in 


CHRISTENDOM  297 

every  earthly  manifestation  of  it  to  the  end — are  neces- 
sary to  any  orderly  planetary  system  revolving  about  it. 
The  development  of  the  Mosaic  Law  obscured  its 
original  principle.  Pagan  systems  in  like  manner  veiled 
and  in  the  end  perverted  and  disguised  the  bright  truths 
which  irradiated  and  graced  their  beginnings.  The  in- 
stitutions which  had  so  stable,  so  vast,  and  so  complex 
development  in  the  Roman  Empire  were  woven  into  a 
f;ibric  of  conventional  habit  and  tradition  which  became 
dull  and  lifeless.  Such  reaction  as  gave  them  any 
bright  illusion  came  from  no  zeal  like  that  of  the  Hebrew 
prophets,  but  chiefly  from  the  poets  and  philosophers 
inspired  by  Greek  culture  ;  it  was  not  radical  in  reaction, 
and  it  antagonised  structural  degeneration  rather  than 
the  systems  themselves,  whose  dissolution  was  necessary 
to  any  genuine  renascence.  The  old  sentiment  of  kin- 
ship was  weakened,  while  the  lines  of  caste  became  more 
rigid;  social  amenities  consisted  with  fine  cruelties  ;  civic 
grandeur  and  formal  justice  tended  to  exclude  living 
graces,  until  the  only  really  vital  current  was  the  life  of 
the  lowly  people,  broken  and  downcast,  and  so  prepared 
to  receive  the  Christian  Gospel,  while  the  hard,  artificial 
crust,  lifted  far  above  the  stream,  awaited  the  hammer 
of  the  Goth  which  was  to  break  it  in  pieces.  Yet  in  all 
these  systems  are  found  mundane  charms,  not  appar- 
ent in  Hebraic  life,  which  are  associated  only  with  the 
finesse  of  culture  in  manners,  literature,  and  art,  being 
inseparable  from  a  stable  order  of  things  having  the  fe- 
icity  of  outward  completeness,  in  a  movement  not  hasti- 
ly arrested  by  violence  from  without,  by  holy  zeal,  or  by 
prophetic  paralysis,  but  allowed  its  natural  modulation 
and  conclusion. 


298  A   STUDY   OF  DEATH 

Because  the  Hebrew  race,  or  that  remnant  of  it  which 
was  held  to  its  peculiar  destiny,  was  withheld  from  the 
outward  accomplishments  which  have  constituted  the 
greatness  of  other  peoples,  it  is  not  therefore  to  be  ac- 
cepted as  the  model  of  national  development.  The 
little  child  is  the  type  of  the  spiritual  life  of  the  Chris- 
tian ;  but  the  Christian  is  not  therefore  denied  the  sturdy 
maturity  of  manhood.  The  ethical  conception  of  the 
Greek,  Roman,  or  modern  world  is  not  prominent  in  the 
Sermon  on  the  Mount,  but  we  are  not  therefore  called 
upon  to  repudiate  ethics,  or  even  that  social  specialisa- 
tion of  morality  which  seems  to  contradict  the  words 
of  the  Master.  We  do  not  instruct  our  police  to  ignore 
the  overt  act  and  to  regard  only  the  inward  motive ;  we 
maintain  our  conventional  procedure  in  government  and 
in  all  social  functions  ;  and  in  the  conduct  of  our  indi- 
vidual life  we  do  not  practise  celibacy  because  the 
Lord  did  not  marry ;  though  he  said,  Give  to  him  that 
asketh,  we  do  not  indulge  ourselves  in  indiscriminate 
alms  -  giving,  nor  do  we  discard  prudence  because  he 
said,  Take  no  thought  for  the  morrow. 

The  disintegration  of  Hebrew  life  and  that  divesti- 
ture which  characterised  the  life  of  the  Lord  and  his 
disciples  served  a  singular  purpose  for  all  humanity, 
baring  the  inmost  heart,  the  supreme  desire,  "the  one 
thing  needful."  That  purpose  was  served  so  effectively 
that  the  true  Christian  can  never  lose  sight  of  the  spir- 
itual principle.  While  there  are  circumstances  in  which 
men  who  would  secure  the  greatest  fruitfulness  of  work 
for  others  must  be  "  eunuchs  for  the  Kingdom  of  Heav- 
en's sake,"  freshly  illustrating  the  central  principle  of 
their  faith,  yet  from  the  foundation  laid  by  these  must 


CHRISTENDOM  299 

be  erected  a  superstructure  which  shall  at  the  same  time 
express  the  divine-human  fellowship  and  the  economies 
of  a  complex  social  order,  civil,  moral,  intellectual,  aes- 
thetic, and  industrial.  There  are  times  when  the  preach- 
er must  take  the  humble  garb  of  the  prophet,  and,  like 
St.  Francis  of  Assisi,  teach  the  lesson  of  poverty  ;  and 
there  are  periods  of  wide-spread  corruption  and  dead 
formalism,  when  superstructures  must  be  destroyed,  and 
the  over-ripe  and  morbid  summer,  vaunting  her  distain- 
ment  and  reeking  in  wantonness,  must  yield  to  the 
rigour  and  release  of  winter.  But  for  Puritan,  Methodist, 
and  Quaker — for  all  the  prophets  of  divestiture — there 
is  the  spring-time  also  and  the  foison  of  another 
summer. 


VI 

Either  season  has  its  evils  as  well  as  its  goods ;  its 
characteristic  violence,  whether  it  be  the  fanaticism  of 
destruction  or  the  madness  of  merrymaking;  and  its 
peculiar  grace,  whether  it  be  that  of  candid  „., 

_  _  1  lie  .Slimmer 

and  unyielding  virtue,  or  that  of  virtue's  sac-  amnvinter 
rifice.  Christianity  frankly  owns  both  sea- 
sons. The  Lord  himself,  in  the  most  sublime  utterance 
that  ever  fell  from  human  lips,  said:  "  Whereunto  then 
shall  I  liken  the  men  of  this  generation  ?  .  .  .  They  are 
like  unto  children  that  sit  in  the  marketplace,  and  call 
one  to  another,  which  say.  We  piped  unto  you,  and  ye 
did  not  dance  ;  we  wailed,  and  ye  did  not  weep.  For 
John  the  Baptist  is  come  eating  no  bread  nor  drinking 
wine  ;  and  ye  say,  He  hath  a  devil.  The  Son  of  man 
is  come  eating  and  drinking ;  and   ye   say,  Behold,  a 


300  A  STUDY  OF  DEATH 

gluttonous  man,  and  a  winebibber,  a  friend  of  publi- 
cans and  sinners!  But  wisdom  is  justified  of  all  her 
children." 

It  is  the  bridegroom's  presence  that  prompts  the  fes- 
tival, and  in  his  absence  there  is  fasting.  Devoid  as 
was  the  life  of  Christ  of  everything  associated  with  ma- 
terial wealth  and  worldly  pomp,  yet  the  seed  of  his 
kingdom,  which  in  him  suffered  death,  divesting  itself 
of  every  outward  integument,  so  that  it  was  seen  in  the 
naked  essence  of  its  germinant  power,  was  to  abound  in 
the  world  because  of  that  death,  showing  its  heavenly 
might  in  earthly  investiture. 

Christ  as  a  Prophet  reversed  the  prophet's  primitive 
habit.  Among  all  Oriental  peoples  the  earliest  mani- 
festation of  prophecy  was  attended  with  a  kind  of 
frenzy,  with  wild  antics,  repellent  yet  fascinating  and 
awe-inspiring,  like  the  frantic  mood  of  a  Delphic  priest- 
ess. Islam  began  in  epilepsy.  Prophecy  in  these  as- 
pects is  corrosive  and  like  a  biting  frost,  with  an  eager 
momentum  of  destruction.  It  tears  away  all  veils,  as 
does  insanity,  and  dispels  illusions.  Life  in  its  fresh 
vigour  turns  away  from  this  hoary  violence  and  seeks 
investment  and  plenitude,  dramatic  masques,  the  full 
volume  of  its  harmony,  the  momentum  of  its  procession. 
But  this  movement  also  comes  into  its  fever  and  drastic 
violence. 

Storage  is  for  expenditure,  and  the  expenditure  runs 
into  ruin,  so  that  there  seems  to  be  the  divine  law  of  im- 
poverishment, bringing  desire  back  to  its  hunger.  But 
the  hungry  are  blessed  only  because  they  shall  be  filled. 
If  one  rests  in  the  hunger  for  its  own  sake,  then  has  it 
a  greater  peril  than  gluttony  and  drunkenness,  as  is  il- 


CHRISTENDOM  301 

liistrated  in  the  temptations  of  St.  Antliony.  The  empty 
room,  swept  and  garnished,  is  especially  prepared  for 
demoniacal  possession. 

The  Messiah  did  not  come  to  men  as  an  impalpable 
ghost  (even  after  his  resurrection),  inviting  them  to  dis- 
embodiment. Rather  was  our  human  flesh  as  dear  to 
him  as  that  of  children  to  their  mother,  and  never  in 
word  of  his  was  there  any  animadversion  upon  our 
carnal  plight.  He  enjoyed  the  festival,  and  even  turned 
water  into  wine  for  those  already  well-drunken. 


VII 

While  the  deepest  spiritual  insight  reverts  to  the  Child 
Jesus  and  to  the  plasticity  of  the  Christian  type  in  his 
followers;  to  the  love  which  judgeth  not  and  thinketh 
no  evil,  yet  it  is  a  view  which  may  be  so  held 
as  to  arrest  all  development,  and  to  neutralise  "uhLes." 
Christianity  as  an  organ  of  social  movement 
and  as  a  working  power  in  the  world.  The  injunc- 
tion to  turn  the  other  cheek  also  to  the  smiter  is  one 
that  if  followed  would  truly  express  the  spiritual  at- 
titude of  the  Christian  toward  all  men,  as  preferring 
peace  to  strife.  But  the  Lord  himself  gave  quite  anoth- 
er view  of  the  practical  operation  of  Christianity  as  a 
promoter  of  strife,  setting  a  man  at  variance  with  those 
of  his  own  household.  "  The  zeal  of  thine  house  hath 
eaten  me  up ;"  but  this  zeal  for  the  inmost  Presence  be- 
came in  the  outer  court  a  flagellation  of  those  who  made 
it  a  den  of  thieves.  He  bade  his  disciples  to  pray  in 
secret  to  Him  who  seeth  in  secret,  and  in  alms-giving  to 


302  A  STUDY  OF  DEATH 

not  let  the  left  hand  know  what  the  right  hand  doeth — 
as  if  goodness  had  only  a  hidden  excellence,  and  should 
be  removed  from  the  field  of  self-consciousness.  Yet 
he  bade  them  let  their  light  shine  before  men  that  these 
might  see  their  good  works.  The  children  of  the  house- 
hold were  free  from  obligation  to  Caesar,  yet  he  advised 
the  payment  of  the  tribute.  The  miracle  was  the  sign  of 
the  hidden  potency  of  the  life  that  was  in  him,  but  he 
exercised  this  power  reluctantly,  and  declared  wicked 
and  adulterous  the  generation  seeking  the  sign.  "  If 
they  hear  not  Moses  and  the  prophets,  neither  will  they 
be  persuaded,  if  one  rise  from  the  dead." 

The  principle  of  the  heavenly  kingdom  was  flexible, 
spontaneous  in  its  operation,  as  of  a  spirit  that  is  like 
the  wind,  which  bloweth  where  it  listeth,  and  thou 
canst  not  tell  whence  it  cometh  nor  whither  it  goeth. 
Yet  in  many  ways  the  Lord  recognised  as  necessary  an 
order  which  tends  to  hardness  and  firm  stability,  as  of 
a  house  founded  upon  a  rock.  The  hard  lines  of  de- 
velopment are  not  ignored.  Strait  is  the  gate,  and 
narrow  is  the  way.  Strive  to  enter  in.  Thou  knewest 
that  I  was  a  hard  master,  gathering  where  I  have  not 
strewn ;  therefore  even  thy  one  talent  must  not  be 
hidden,  but  must  return  to  me  with  usury.  Seek,  and  ye 
shall  find  ,  knock,  and  it  shall  be  opened  unto  you.  By 
their  fruits  ye  shall  know  the  Children  of  the  Father. 

Christ  himself  had  come  into  an  order  more  ancient 
than  the  earth  ;  he  had  always  been  in  it,  the  creative 
life  thereof,  determining  its  course  ;  but  he  had  now 
come  into  it  as  man,  with  all  the  passions  of  a  man, 
with  all  the  limitations  of  a  human  consciousness ;  and 
he  had  come  into  it  not  for  its  abrogation  but  for  its 


CHRISTENDOM  303 

fulfilment.  Christianity  was  in  its  organisation  to  be 
the  fulfilment  for  man  of  his  destiny  in  the  course 
already  begun,  including  all  human  elements  ;  it  was  to 
be  an  order  as  an  organised  human  experience.  With 
the  harmlessness  of  the  dove  was  to  be  united  the 
wisdom  of  the  serpent — that  very  wisdom  which  led 
man  out  of  Eden. 

The  divine  temptation  leads  us  into  the  illusions  of 
the  phenomenal  world.  The  divine  redemption  partici- 
pates in  these  illusions.  The  coming  of  the  Lord  was 
an  appearing.     But  he  made  all  veils  transparent. 


VIII 

Any  religious  system  which  should  profess  to  rend 
all  veils  ,  which  should  attempt  the  abrogation  of  time 
and  the  world,  and  of  the  desire  which  makes 
its  way  outwardly  into  worldly  embodiments   ExtremeTof 
and  constructions,  would  rest  in  Buddhistic     Religious 
nihilism.     This  is  "the  will  not  to  live,"  the 
characteristic,  or  rather  the  characterless,  aim  of  Scho- 
penhauer's pessimistic  philosophy.     It  is  not  one  with 
the  divine  will,  and  it  is  not  an  acceptance  or  compre- 
hension of  that  will,  but  is  rather  its  repudiation. 

Mahometanism,  going  to  the  other  extreme,  even 
promising  to  its  adherents  a  sensual  Paradise,  frankly 
accepts  all  illusions,  but  makes  them  the  everlasting 
cerements  of  the  soul.  Islam  is  the  modern  Ishmael, 
whose  hand  is  against  every  man,  and  every  man's  hand 
against  him.  This  faith  began  in  the  insanity  of  the 
prophetic  function  unaccompanied  by  prophetic  insight; 


304  A  STUDY   OF  DEATH 

began  in  brutalities,  and  has  progressed  through  con- 
quest based  upon  insolence  and  signalised  by  its  atroci- 
ties. It  is  perversely  dissociative,  incapable  of  catholic 
fellowship,  or  even  of  coherence  among  its  own  constitu- 
ents. It  has  been  of  service  to  the  modern  world  chief- 
ly as  a  menace  and  a  challenge,  holding  shrines  not 
its  own,  and  so  provoking  the  crusades,  and  promoting 
organisation  as  against  itself,  very  much  as  Napoleon 
caused  the  rehabilitation  of  Europe  as  the  sole  means 
of  its  security  against  his  inordinate  rapacity. 

Christendom,  mainly  Indo-European  in  its  constitu- 
tion ;  anti-Semitic,  though  deriving  its  religious  inspira- 
tion from  the  Hebrew;  in  its  westward  course  of  empire 
never  wholly  losing  its  inward  orientation,  has  been  al- 
lowed its  steady  growth  because  the  monstrous  aggre- 
gations of  humanity  in  Asia  have  slumbered,  the  Mos- 
lem alone  having  shown  a  strong  hand,  but  disturbing 
only  to  stimulate. 


IX 

The  Christianity  which  has  made  this  Christendom 
did  not  owe  its  first  expansion  in  the  West  to  its  organ- 
isation.    It  was  in  its  plastic  childhood,  and  when  it 

seemed  most  averse  to  worldly  offices  and 
Chri'stianh^      emoluments,  when  its   ritual  was  a  simple, 

homely  affair  not  yet  associated  with  Church 
edifices,  that  it  established  its  contacts  with  the  world, 
spreading  as  a  gentle  insinuation  throughout  the  Roman 
empire.  This  was  also  the  time  of  its  inspired  writings. 
The  wonderful  expansion  and  inspiration  were  miracles 
such  as  belong  to  infancy,  spontaneous  manifestations 


CHRISTENDOM  305 

native  to  the  spirit  and  not  apparent,  but  rather  obscured 
in  later  periods  of  structural  development.  A  mighty 
wave  of  heavenly  strength  and  peace  seemed  to  pass 
over  the  whole  earth,  quite  in  accord  with  the  condi- 
tions of  the  general  armistice  then  prevailing,  and  espe- 
cially comfortable  to  the  down-trodden  and  distressed 
poor,  to  whom  no  worldly  armistice  brought  rest  or  con- 
solation. The  Gospels  and  the  Epistles  breathed  the 
spirit  of  love  and  peace,  bidding  men  love  one  another 
and  bear  each  other's  burdens.  At  Jerusalem,  where 
there  was  the  greatest  tenacity  of  the  old  forms,  and 
also  the  insistence  upon  justification  by  works,  before  the 
name  of  Christian  was  adopted  by  the  Church,  the  fol- 
lowers of  Jesus  in  a  singular  manner  illustrated  the  gra- 
cious spirit  of  a  new  faith  in  a  communistic  economy. 
It  was  a  mode  of  life  that  could  not  be  maintained,  and 
the  Christians  at  Jerusalem  became,  in  consequence  of 
it,  a  burden  upon  the  Western  churches  ;  but  it  lasted 
long  enough  to  find  expression  in  the  sublime  ethics  of 
St.  James's  Epistle,  which  shows  what  the  moral  order 
may  become  when  wholly  vitalised  by  the  spirit  of 
Christ,  and  when  society,  though  it  may  not  have  be- 
come communistic,  shall  in  its  economic  expression 
have  reconciled  with  the  law  of  Love  all  the  competi- 
tions and  antagonisms  necessary  to  outward  integration 
and  development.  This  reconcilement  is  indicated  in 
those  words  of  the  Lord,  not  recorded  in  the  gospels, 
but  quoted  in  early  Christian  writings :  "  When  the  out- 
side is  as  the  inside,  then  the  kingdom  of  heaven  is 
come."  Only  in  that  consummation  visibly  realised 
could  we  see  what  was  the  scope  of  the  kingdom  deter- 
mined in  its  marvellous  germination.     The  definite  an- 


3o6  A  STUDY  OF  DEATH 

ticipation  of  the  issue  is  not  possible  even  in  the  most 
hopeful  dream  of  the  optimist. 

In  a  very  vital  sense  there  was  organisation  even  in 
this  earliest  manifestation  of  Christianity.  The  fellow- 
ship was  itself  a  living  organism,  a  vine  with  tender 
branches  widely  and  swiftly  spreading,  throwing  its  soft 
tendrils  about  the  hearts  of  the  lowly,  and  thus  for  a 
long  time  escaping  the  notice  of  the  powerful.  This 
was  its  native  disposition,  following  closely  the  ways  of 
the  Master.  We  think  of  it  as  a  power  building  up 
from  the  bottom,  and  so  it  was,  if  we  consider  only  its 
main  constituency;  but  in  a  society  like  that  of  the 
pagan  world  at  this  period — a  world  prepared  for  its 
own  dissolution,  and  expecting,  as  in  a  dream,  some 
transformation  from  a  mysterious  source — there  are  al- 
ways wise  men,  and  wise  especially  in  the  culture  of  the 
heart,  to  whom  nothing  human  is  alien  ;  who  for  human- 
ity are  willing  to  give  up  class,  in  an  order  where  no 
class  is  fortunate  and  all  are  at  a  loss  ;  who  are  looking 
for  some  new  star  of  hope  in  their  heavens.  To  such 
men  Christianity  from  the  first  made  a  strong  appeal, 
and  they  naturally  became  the  leaders  of  the  people. 
Others  there  may  have  been,  men  of  religious  zeal  and 
high  intellectual  attainments,  who,  like  Saul  of  Tarsus, 
first  came  into  contact  with  the  Christians  as  their  per- 
secutors, and,  seeing  in  the  new  faith  a  greater  motive 
for  their  zeal,  became  its  ardent  adherents. 


CHRISTENDOM  307 


X 

Certainly  the  ecclesiastical  organisation  must  have 
been  far  advanced,  and  must  have  shown  a  disposition 
toward  authority  and  influence  in  society  and  the  State, 
when  Constantine  became  the  champion  of  Christianity, 
and  took  its  symbol  of  the  cross  as  the  sign  through 
which  his  armies  should  become  victorious. 

When  at  a  later  period  the  Church  came  into  close 
alliance  with  the  State,  becoming  the  arbiter  of  empires, 
its  organisation  as  a  world-power  had  com- 
plete development,  entering  into  the  full  am-  vaT church." 
plitude  of  its  earthly  investiture.  Catholic 
brotherly  love  was  at  the  heart  of  it,  and  in  every  fold 
of  its  garment.  It  was  the  cosmic  order  of  the  Lord's 
spiritual  kingdom  —  the  field  of  the  Lord's  espousal 
with  humanity.  That  was  a  true  pontificate  which 
bridged  all  the  chasms  between  social  classes  —  be- 
tween wealth  and  poverty,  culture  and  ignorance,  mas- 
tery and  service,  and  also  between  heavenly  grace  and 
the  arbitrary  limitations  of  formal  justice.  It  was  such 
a  hierarchy  as  naturally  found  its  typical  representative 
in  St.  Augustine. 

The  Church  had  placed  in  tlie  hands  of  the  Roman 
Pontiff"  not  only  the  crosier,  but  also  the  sword  and  scep- 
tre ;  and  the  social  order  of  Christendom  in  the  mediae- 
val period  could  not  otherwise  have  been  established 
and  maintained  on  a  Christian  basis.  Not  less  but 
more  than  in  the  age  of  primitive  Christianity  was  this 
organisation  the  embodiment  of  the  Spirit,  for,  though 
the  Pentecostal  flame  was  hidden,  yet  it  was  the  same 


3o8  A  STUDY   OF  DEATH 

flame  that  vitalised  the  whole  structure  in  its  vigorous 
growth  for  the  full  measure  of  its  beneficent  ministra- 
tion. The  dove,  which  is  the  emblem  of  the  Holy  Spirit, 
because  it  has  wings  for  flight,  does  not  therefore  make 
his  fixed  abode  in  the  heavens,  but  rather  descends  and 
makes  his  home  among  the  haunts  of  men.  The  min- 
istration of  the  Spirit  is  by  descent.  It  was  so  in  the 
Christ ;  it  is  so  in  the  Church,  which  as  a  fellowship  is 
everlasting,  but  which  as  visibly  manifested  in  any  spe- 
cial embodiment  has  a  beneficence  in  its  expenditure 
and  even  in  its  disintegration  measured  by  the  degree 
in  which  it  has  received  and  manifested  the  spirit  of 
fellowship.  As  a  world-power  an  ecclesiastical,  like  any 
other  organism,  rises  to  the  height  from  which  it  may 
most  beneficently  fiill. 

That  alliance  of  Church  ;ind  State  in  which  the  former 
was  authoritatively  dominant  lasted  long  enough  to  se- 
cure its  ends  ;  and  during  this  period  the  wisdom  of  the 
serpent,  so  necessary  to  its  efficiency,  was  fully  evident 
in  its  practical  working  and  in  its  development  of  dog- 
ma. The  exigencies  of  the  ecclesiastical  situation  de- 
manded a  dramatic  theology  as  well  as  a  dramatic 
ritual ;  and  in  both  became  manifest  the  inevitable  con- 
tradiction of  the  formal  system  to  its  formative  prin- 
ciple. 

Regarding  merely  external  appearances,  it  would  seem 
that  the  integration  of  Christendom  had  been  secured 
by  the  surrender  of  Christianity  itself.  The  Church 
would  appear  to  have  been  dominated  by  the  world. 
The  Protestant  reformers  easily  substituted  for  the  scar- 
let woman  of  the  Apocalypse,  there  indicating  the  Rome 
of  Nero,  the  papal  Rome  of  their  own  century.     But  in 


CHRISTENDOM  309 

realit)'  an  inestimable  service  had  been  rendered  to  hu- 
manity by  the  mediaeval  Church.  Pagan  Europe  had 
been  brought  into  the  Christian  fold  ;  among  the  com- 
mon people  the  faith  had  been  accepted  in  its  sim- 
plicity, and,  though  mingled  with  superstitious  imagin- 
ings, it  had  nourished  and  brought  into  activity  the 
sentiments  and  impulses  peculiarly  distinctive  to  a  Chris- 
tian life,  individual  and  social.  The  people  were  lifted 
into  a  freer  atmosphere  and  yet  remained  unsophisti- 
cated, readily  moved  by  generous  enthusiasms  and  hos- 
pitable to  the  lofty  motives  of  an  age  which  abounded 
in  chivalric  romance  and  saintly  legend.  They  inter- 
preted so  much  of  the  Gospel  as  reached  them  with 
their  hearts  rather  than  with  their  intellects.  Theology 
and  ritual  were  the  concern  of  the  bishops,  and  the  side 
of  these  presented  to  the  popular  heart  was  that  best 
ministering  to  its  need — impressive,  nutritive,  and  dis- 
ciplinary. Thus  was  preserved  within  the  hard  enclos- 
ure of  official  ecclesiasticism  a  genuine  spiritual  fellow- 
ship ;  for  this  indeed  was  the  induration  of  the  system 
necessary,  as  government  is  necessary  for  the  protection 
of  home  life  and  social  activities.  No  system  retaining 
the  simple  plasticity  of  primitive  Christianity  could  have 
withstood  the  invasion  of  Islam  ;  nor  would  it  have 
sufficed  for  the  building  up  of  Christendom  through 
the  tutelage  and  discipline  of  the  swarming  Barbarians 
whose  rude  strength  had  throttled  Roman  civilisation. 

The  degeneration  and  corruption  which  in  a  natural 
sequence  followed  this  ecclesiastical  evolution  were  but 
the  accidents  attending  the  completion  of  a  sacrifice  be- 
gun in  the  fortitude  of  a  necessary  but  arbitrary  sov- 
ereignty; and  the  forces  of  the  Reformation  were  nour- 


3IO  A  STUDY  OF  DEATH 

ished  by  the  fortitude  and  found  their  opportunity  in 
the  weakness  and  corruption  of  a  structure  which  had 
done  its  work  in  the  world. 


XI 

The  popular  life  in  the  Middle  Ages  owed   to  the 
Church  its  happiest  moods,  and  the  natural  and  sponta- 
neous exaltation  of  these.     The  plastic  state  of  child- 
hood  was    marvellously  maintained.      Faith 

Accommoda-  _  _   ^ 

tion  to  the  was  Creative,  the  builder  of  cathedrals,  the 
opuar  1  e.  j^^j.^j.  of  legends  ;  and,  as  in  the  creation  of 
the  world,  it  included  the  grotesque  as  well  as  the  beau- 
tiful. As  the  child  fondles  fear  and  insists  upon  the 
dragon  element  in  the  fairy-tale,  naively  clinging  to  the 
"mark  of  the  beast"  in  every  fanciful  representation, 
so  the  mediaeval  Christian  imagination,  with  the  divine 
catholicity  which  saw  the  original  creation  to  be  good — 
though  including  radical  evil  and  all  dark  provisions — 
freely  mingled  old  Titanic  glooms  with  new-born  hopes, 
cherishing  the  fiery  baptism  of  purgatorial  pains.  In 
the  creations  of  art,  the  ugly  and  miscreant  had  their 
place  in  the  triumphant  harmony.  All  things  were  to- 
gether "bound  under  hope."  As  the  child  expects  the 
loving  spell  that  shall  show  the  Beast  to  be  really  beau- 
tiful beneath  his  unshapely  masque,  so  Christian  love 
judgeth  not,  but  awaits  that  vision  whose  light  shall 
eclipse  discrimination  between  the  clean  and  unclean  of 
God's  creatures,  showing  what  we  call  ugly  really  beau- 
tiful after  a  pattern  older  than  we  see  in  what  appears 
to  us  most  comely. 


CHRISTENDOM  311 

Certain  indulgences  and  accommodations  of  the  med- 
ia,'val  Church  to  the  popular  mood,  both  in  the  matter 
.of  belief  and  practice,  seem  quite  natural  from  this  point 
of  view  :  such,  for  example,  as  the  tolerance  of  Mariolatry 
among  peoples  accustomed  to  the  worship  of  Isis  and 
other  female  divinities,  and  the  adoption  of  pagan 
feast-days.  The  growth  of  the  kingdom  was  from  a 
seed  that  might  be  planted  in  any  human  heart,  just 
where  that  heart  was  found,  sure  to  burst  its  cerements 
and  to  find  its  proper  nutriment  even  in  the  husks  of 
an  outworn  faith — to  shed  the  false  and  rise  the  true. 

Nurture  itself  implies  a  life  diminished  and  broken 
for  the  increase  and  integrity  of  the  nursling,  so  that 
Christian  beliefs  have  often  had  in  outward  form  the 
fallibility  peculiar  to  the  estate  of  humanity  :  not  cor- 
rupt or  corrupting  as  received  by  the  fervid  believer, 
though  if  not  thus  hungrily  taken  into  his  organic  spir- 
itual life,  if  regarded  as  having  a  use  and  meaning 
apart  from  such  spiritual  assimilation,  or  if  received  by 
the  mind  only  as  logical  formulations,  they,  like  the  un- 
consumed  manna  in  the  wilderness,  disclose  their  cor- 
ruptibility. The  "means  of  grace  "  are  not  objects  of 
worship ;  it  is  some  descent  in  them  from  the  heavenly 
height  of  the  principle  they  embody  which  brings  them 
ne.xt  the  craving  of  a  spiritual  hunger,  and  but  for  the 
expedition  of  that  satisfaction  they  suffer  vilification. 

It  is  not  a  matter  of  indifference  what  a  man  believes, 
or  what  otherwise  may  be  offered  for  his  spiritual  nour- 
ishment. The  same  food  is  not  suited  to  all  physical 
organisms,  or  to  any  one  organism  at  every  stage  of  its 
growth.  The  kingdom  of  heaven  is  within  us,  and  hence 
there  is  in  us  its  spiritual  hunger,  which  determines  its 


312  A  STUDY  OF  DEATH 

own  selection  ;  and  because  of  the  marvellous  growth 
of  this  kingdom,  there  is  a  development  of  the  hunger 
itself  and  also  of  the  nurture — the  source  and  principle* 
in  either  case  remaining  the  same,  being  essential  and 
eternal.  But  the  growth  is  an  ascension,  and  that  which 
ministers  to  it  a  descension.  This  is  the  ministration 
of  death  unto  life. 


XII 

Protestantism,  however,  was  very  far  from  being  a 
revival  of  primitive  Christianity.      Luther,  indeed,  re- 
vived Paul's   doctrine    of   Justification    by  Faith,  and 
^   ,   .         with   such   vehemence    that   he   denounced 

Ecclesias- 
tical Special-   the  Epistlc  of  James  as  "  an  epistle  of  straw ;" 

but  the  movement  of  the  Reformation  was 
itself  so  far  dominated  by  State  policy  that  its  immedi- 
ate result  seemed  to  be  a  mere  schism  rather  than  the 
great  spiritual  reaction  which  radically  it  really  was. 
Wherever  this  reaction  was  not  at  first  evident  it  was 
afterward  fully  developed,  as  in  English  Puritanism. 

The  dissension  itself,  like  that  which  originally  had 
divided  the  Western  from  the  Eastern  Church,  was  for 
new  integration,  and  it  was  attended  with  violence  and 
persecutive  hate,  such  as  in  the  Athanasian  Creed  had 
consigned  to  eternal  damnation  all  Christians  not  as- 
senting to  its  doctrine — showing  that  not  only  the  wis- 
dom of  the  serpent  but  its  venom  also  entered  into  the 
ecclesiastical  edification,  even  as  the  horrors  of  war 
mark  every  critical  epoch  in  the  progress  of  civilisation. 
There  is  no  nutritive  process,  for  the  building  up  of  any 
structure,  that  does  not  involve  the  production  of  poison, 


CHRISTENDOM  ^i2> 

and  still  more  conspicuously  does  this  malady  attend  all 
organic  functioning. 

Christian  fellowship  does  not,  even  in  its  beginning, 
mean  the  destruction  of  antipathies,  and  the  divine  life 
no  more  than  the  human  has  for  its  aim  security,  peace, 
and  quietness.  That  would  be  to  substitute  salvation 
for  redemption.  Ecclesiastical,  like  all  other  specialisa- 
tion, is  through  division.  It  is  as  inevitable  that  the 
visible  Church  should  be  broken  up  into  sects  as  that  a 
vast  empire  should  be  divided  between  different  races — 
each  of  these  developing  a  separate  nationality.  This 
tendency  leads,  as  disciplined  intelligence  becomes  gen- 
eral, to  individualism  and  the  emphatic  recognition  of 
personal  liberty  and  responsibility. 

Our  Christian  civilisation  is  fortunate  in  having 
reached  a  point,  never  even  approached  by  any  ancient 
civilisation,  where  we  can  frankly  give  up  the  poet's 
dream  of 

"  Tlie  Parliament  of  man,  the  Federation  of  the  world." 

The  individual  does  not  wither  as  the  world  grows  more 
and  more.  He  who  in  the  true  sense  is  most  himself 
is  most  for  the  world.  The  profoundest  patriotism  is 
the  truest  cosmopolitanism.  We  can  already  see  that 
the  kingdom  of  heaven  cometh  not  by  observation.  It 
is  no  external  dynastic  bond  that  can  unite  nations  : 
the  outward  delimitation  promotes  the  inward  bond.  It 
is  fortunate  for  both  State  and  Church  that  the  social 
order  has  entered  upon  that  stage  in  its  progression  in 
which  each  can  best  perform  its  functions  independent- 
ly of  the  other,  and  in  such  manner  as  to  leave  the  in- 
dividual, in  his  proper  field,  perfectly  free,  unconscious 


314  A  STUDY   OF  DEATH 

of  any  outward  authority  exercised  by  either ;  fortunate 
also  for  society  that  it  can  hope  in  the  near  future  to 
have  the  perfectly  free  play  of  all  its  proper  activities  in 
the  development  of  industry,  science,  and  art. 

This  is,  indeed,  the  sum  of  the  advance  made  by 
Christendom  since  the  Renaissance,  which  gave  to  the 
modern  world  all  that  was  worth  having  from  the  old — 
not  as  a  mere  heritage,  but  as  something  to  be  crea- 
tively transformed  by  the  Christian  spirit. 

In  all  these  lines  of  advance  the  kingdom  of  heaven 
after  the  Christ  type  has  its  specialisation.  It  is  the 
specialisation  of  humanity — not  of  a  visible  Church,  of  a 
visible  State,  or  of  that  which  we  call  Society;  least  of 
all  is  it  a  realisation  of  St.  Augustine's  Civitas  Dei :  all 
these  are  but  the  masques  of  the  surely  though  invisibly 
coming  kingdom.  Other  masques  will  follow  these,  the 
same  veils  indeed,  but  clarified  and  made  transparent 
in  the  process  of  human  redemption.  The  dramatic 
theology  of  St.  Augustine,  so  alien  to  the  conceptions  of 
redemption  entertained  by  Paul  and  by  the  Greek  Fa- 
thers, with  its  peculiar  doctrine  of  Grace  as  confined 
within  sacramental  limitations,  must,  like  the  dramatic 
pomp  of  ritual,  pass  into  its  drastic  stage  and  disappear. 
The  meanings  of  the  divine  Logos,  as  manifested  in 
Nature  and  in  the  Incarnation,  will  be  ultimately  as 
they  were  primarily  seen  to  be  for  all  humanity,  and  to 
themselves  transcend  an  historical  Christ,  an  Apostolic 
succession,  and  a  limited  fellowship. 


CHRISTENDOM  315 


XIII 

It  seems  strange  that  at  the  very  stage  of  progression, 
when  this  noble  prospect  is  possible,  the  superficial  view 
of  our  civilisation  is  made  the  basis  of  the  profoundest 
pessimism.      But  it  is  in  this  very  field  of   „    ,   „ 

*  ■'  Ready  Reac- 

pessimism  that  the  Christian  finds  the  signs        lionof 

^   ,.,.,..    ,  _       ,  .         .  ,  .    .  ,     Modern  Life. 

of  his  brightest  hope.  In  his  view  the  rigid 
worldly  mechanism  becomes  celestial,  and  materialism 
is  seen  as  solvent  to  the  Spirit  of  Life.  The  automatism 
of  habit,  a  facile  descent  into  oblivion,  from  which  life 
and  meaning  are  withdrawn,  is  seen  as  a  release  of  life 
for  new  initiation;  and  though  in  this  mortal  habit  the 
whole  world  should  slip  away  it  would  be  for  the  resur- 
gence of  a  new  world.  Stability  itself  is  kinetic,  the  re- 
sultant of  velocities  inconceivably  swift.  The  diabolism, 
which  in  the  old  systems  of  dualism  was  regarded  as  in- 
herent in  matter,  is  exorcised. 

The  Christian  idea  of  Death,  confirmed  by  every  dis- 
closure of  science,  is  itself  that  of  solution,  through  the 
reaction  proper  to  Life.  The  Christian  idea  of  a  univer- 
sal human  fellowship,  a  recognition  of  the  eternal  kin- 
ship, gives  to  Christendom  its  scope,  broad  enough  to 
include  all  reactions  in  the  harmonious  interaction  of 
all  the  forces  and  elements  involved.  The  fundamental 
difference  between  Paganism  and  Christendom  is  that 
the  latter,  though  its  systems  fail,  has  within  itself  the 
secret  principle  of  renascence,  so  that  the  Child  Jesus  is 
forever  being  born.  Owing  to  the  readiness  of  reaction, 
which  increases  with  the  expansion  of  knowledge  among 
all  classes  of  the  people,  the  Order,  like  a  living  organ- 


3i6  A  STUDY   OF  DEATH 

ism,  is  conserved  through  its  inclusion  of  death,  and 
revolutions  are  possible  without  that  extreme  violence 
which  marked  those  of  earlier  times.  That  in  the  sys- 
tem which  falls  is  doing  its  work. 

All  specialisation  is  a  hiding  of  Life,  whose  authority 
in  our  human  progression  is  thus  secluded  from  the  au- 
thority of  institutions,  retaining  its  creative  potency.  At 
every  step  in  advance  something  is  given  up  which  to 
our  backward  look  seems  more  precious  than  what  we 
have  gained.  Thus  we  regret  the  picturesque  medieeval 
life  with  its  marvellous  enthusiasms,  its  chivalric  impulse, 
and  romantic  heroism,  even  as  many  souls  in  that  period 
regretted  paganism  and  longed  for  the  return  of  Pan. 
Even  in  the  emancipation  of  our  slaves  we  seem  to 
have  suffered  a  loss  through  the  rupture  of  an  intimate 
bond  of  affection  like  that  which  holds  together  the 
members  of  a  household. 

The  gain  from  these  successive  revulsions  is  apparent 
from  a  wider  view.  Every  emancipation  is  an  entrance 
upon  a  life  involving  severer  limitations,  but  the  en- 
largement of  our  perspective  and  the  free  play  of  our 
emotional  and  intellectual  activities  depend  upon  this 
complexity  of  our  finitude.  In  the  discreteness  of  the 
special  accord  is  its  proper  excellence  and  also  its  cor- 
respondence t-o  the  universal  harmony.  The  complete 
perspective  would  receive  the  full  pulsation  of  the  eter- 
nal life  and  its  full  illumination. 

The  Hidden  Life — our  life  hidden  with  Christ  in  God — 
is  our  eternal  and  inalienable  heritage.  The  issues  of 
this  life  in  the  visible  world,  in  the  procession  of  genera- 
tions, we  cannot  mentally  anticipate,  nor  are  they  dis- 
closed  in    any  prophecy.      The   creative  specialisation 


CHRISTENDOM  317 

will  ^o  on,  and  will  surely  be  completed  in  redemption. 
Action  will  still  be  reaction,  antipathy  resolved  as  sym- 
pathy, repulsion  as  attraction,  bondage  as  freedom,  and 
death  as  swallowed  up  of  life.  Evil — all  that  we  have 
called  evil  from  the  beginning  —  will  remain,  even  as 
darkness  will  alternate  with  light ,  and  to  whatever  ex- 
tent abnormal  perversion,  inordinate  selfishness,  and  ar- 
bitrary caprice — the  accidents  of  a  partially  completed 
order — may  disappear,  life  will  still  have  its  normal  pa- 
thology— its  pain  and  frailty  and  repentance. 


CHAPTER  IV 
ANOTHER    WORLD 

What  do  we  or  can  we  know  about  the  thither  side 
of  Death  ? 

There  is  no  sequel  to  the  story  of  Lazarus,  who  was 
raised  from  the  dead,  disclosing  the  secrets  of  that  es- 
tate which  had  been  a  reality  to  him  for  four  days,  as 
we  count  time  upon  the  earth. 

The  Lord  himself,  the  revealer,  in  a  singular  sense,  of 
spiritual  truth,  and  especially  the  illuminator  of  Death, 
gave,  so  far  as  we  know,  no  intimation  to  his  disciples 
of  the  life  beyond  the  grave.  Nor  is  it  recorded  that  they 
asked  for  any.  Death  was  unmasqued  in  the  Resurrec- 
tion and  was  shown  as  one  with  creation,  but  the  full 
light  of  this  wonderful  illumination  was  thrown  upon 
life  here,  showing  not  one  definite  lineament,  not  even 
a  shadowy  trace  of  the  life  beyond.  There  never  has 
been  any  but  an  imaginative  disclosure  of  that  life  to 
men  living  upon  the  earth. 

A  curtain  drawn  so  closely  about  the  present  exist- 
ence must  have  excited  the  vivid  curiosity  of  the  pagan 
mind.  We  find  in  ancient  literature  no  trace  of  this 
curiosity  in  the  shape  it  takes  in  recent  times,  because 
it  was  so  vivid  and  therefore  so  immediately  took  a  fixed 
shape  in  an  imagination  whose  constructions  were  real 
beyond  the  shadow  of  a  doubt.     There  was  a  develop- 


ANOTHER   IVORLD  319 

ment  of  this  imagination  from  age  to  age,  but  at  every 
point  its  creations  were  regarded  as  unquestionable  real- 
ities, as  certain  as  the  objects  of  present  experience. 
To  the  Egyptian  the  Book  of  the  Dead  was  a  genuine 
and  trustworthy  itinerary.  What  Polygnotus  painted 
or  Homer  described  concerning  Hades  was  but  -  re- 
script of  what  the  Greek  already  knew  with  unwavering 
assurance. 

It  was  only  when,  in  a  comparatively  recent  period, 
men  began  to  question  the  reality  of  the  immediately 
external  w'orld  and  to  impugn  the  trustworthiness  of 
their  senses  that  the  "other  world"  also  became  un- 
stable and  the  sport  of  a  mutable  fancy. 

When  we  say  that  the  ancient  imaginations  of  the  un- 
seen world  were  held  as  certitudes,  like  the  sense-per- 
ceptions of  objects  in  the  visible  w'orld,  it  is  not  there- 
fore to  be  supposed  that  these  imaginations  constituted 
a  real  knowledge.  Indeed,  our  sense-perceptions  do 
not  constitute  a  real  knowledge  of  the  external  world 
with  which  we  are  in  contact ;  how  much  less  truly 
could  imagination  render  to  us  the  world  beyond.  The 
belief  which  men  have  had  in  such  imaginings  is  very 
much  like  our  belief  in  dreams  which  seem  to  us  real 
even  though,  in  some  deeper  consciousness,  we  know 
that  we  are  dreaming.  Any  disclosure  or  communica- 
tion must  be  in  the  terms  of  a  life  that  now  is ;  and 
sensibility — whatever  illusion  it  may  involve — is  at  least 
this  vital  and  present  contact.  But  men  have  always 
suspected  the  masque  of  the  world  in  their  sensibility. 
It  is  not  likely  that  the  more  complex  disguise  of  the 
imagination  has  at  any  time  escaped  suspicion.  In  the 
background  of  all  human  thinking,  however  crude,  has 


320  A  STUDY   OF  DEATH 

been  this  intuition  :  we  know  only  that  which,  knowing, 
we  do  not  know  that  we  know.  Gnosticism  is  of  the 
eternal.  Conscious  knowledge  is  of  things  in  time — 
present,  past,  and  future — things  veiled  by  virtue  of 
manifestation.  "  Another  world,"  considered  as  a  defi- 
nite existence,  is  the  only  field  for  absolute  agnosticism, 
wholly  cut  off"  from  human  knowledge  through  sense, 
intellect,  or  spiritual  apprehension  ;  it  is  not  veiled  but 
absolutely  hidden,  and  of  it  there  is  no  possible  revela- 
tion, save  through  entrance  upon  its  actualities,  when  it 
ceases  to  be  "another."  We  know  the  divine,  the  eter- 
nal ;  indeed,  these  alone  are  really  known  since  life 
itself  is  essentially  these  ;  but  what  we  call  another 
world  is  not  simply  invisible,  not  simply  a  future  or  a 
next  world  in  the  sense  that  we  think  of  to-morrow  or 
next  year  ;  it  is  another  by  an  inconceivable  diversity — 
a  distinct  harmonic  synthesis,  for  us  unrelated,  and  un- 
translatable in  any  terms  known  to  us.  The  world  to 
come  we  know,  since  it  is  that  which  this  world  be- 
comes. Another  world  is  a  new  becoming,  having  its 
own  "world  to  come;"  it  is  the  only  incommunicable. 

No  divine  revelation  has  ever  attempted  to  broach 
the  inviolable  secret.  Eye  hath  not  seen,  ear  hath  not 
heard,  neither  hath  it  entered  into  the  heart  of  man  to 
conceive. 

There  is  one  utterance  by  the  Lord,  recorded  in  the 
Gospel,  concerning  the  state  of  the  Children  of  the  Res- 
urrection :  "They  shall  not  marry,  nor  be  given  in 
marriage :  neither  shall  they  die  any  more."  It  is  re- 
markable that,  in  this  declaration,  sex  and  death  are 
joined  together,  as  science  shows  them  to  be  in  the 
specialisation  of  organic  life. 


ANOTHER   IVORLD  321 

The  Lord  referred  to  sex  and  death  as  we  know  them, 
in  their  specialisation.  While  the  essential  principle  of 
espousal  and  that  of  death  are  eternal,  proper  to  any  life 
here  or  hereafter,  it  is  possible  to  conceive  of  a  state  of 
existence  wherein  the  manifestation  of  these  involves 
none  of  the  external  features  associated  with  our  knowl- 
edge of  them  in  their  earthly  manifestation.  As  there 
are  lower  organisms  which  we  know  to  be  sexless  and 
deathless,  in  the  sense  we  have  of  sex  and  death  in 
an  advanced  specialisation,  so  there  may  be  higher  or- 
ganisms, belonging  to  that  "other  world,"  to  which  these 
special  terms  are  inapplicable.  We  say  there  may  be : 
Christ  says  there  are  ;  and  although  this  assertion  is  the 
only  one  made  by  him  directly  bearing  upon  the  condi- 
tions of  a  future  life,  it  is  very  far-reaching  in  its  sug- 
gestions. 

Even  in  this  earthly  human,  life  all  desire  is  spirit- 
ually lifted  into  its  heaven,  not  as  being  destroyed,  but 
as  dying  to  one  environment  and  being  raised  into  an- 
other, where  its  manifestation  takes  higher  forms  and  its 
ministrations  seem  like  those  of  the  angels.  It  is  as  if 
out  of  the  earthly  matrix  of  Passion  had  been  born  its 
heavenly  embodiment,  not  associated  with  corruption 
and  so  seeming  something  deathless,  though  it  lives 
through  the  quickness  of  what  Death  essentially  is  in  an 
eternal  life.  It  is  possible  that  the  Lord's  saying  had 
its  real  meaning  as  applicable  to  the  heavenly  exaltation 
of  any  life,  present  or  future.  Certainly  the  characteristic 
of  Christian  life  is  its  realisation  here  of  an  eternal  life, 
through  a  constant  death  and  resurrection  ;  and  this  ex- 
altation belongs  to  our  antipathies  as  well  as  to  our 
sympathies — to  hate  and  anger  as  well  as  to  love  :  these 


32  2  A  STUDY   OF  DEATH 

also  having  their  heaven  and  angelic  scope,  in  a  field 
of  reconcilement. 

We  can  see,  then,  why  Christian  thought  is  fixed 
upon  a  World  to  Come  rather  than  upon  what  is  called 
Another  World.  This  present  life  has  part  in  the 
eternal  as  truly  as  any  life  ever  can  have. 

We  pass  from  glory  to  glory,  and  that  crisis  which  we 
call  death  is  only  a  transition  from  one  harmony  to  an- 
other. In  certain  forms  of  the  Polish  national  dances, 
the  guests  move  from  room  to  room  in  the  palace,  the 
music  and  the  movement  ever  changing  in  the  proces- 
sional march,  according  to  the  progressive  phases  of  the 
theme  enacted.  From  beginning  to  end  it  is  the  same 
theme,  and  the  guests  are  the  same.  So  it  may  be  in 
the  progression  of  our  human  life  from  one  mansion  to 
another  of  the  Father's  House  ;  there  is  a  mystic  change, 
not  of  personalities  but  of  special  individual  guises,  in- 
volving complete  divestiture,  the  theme  enacted  remain- 
ing the  same. 

It  is  because  of  the  complete  divestiture  that  entire 
newness  is  possible.  Our  attention  is  so  fixed  upon 
structure  and  upon  changes  as  themselves  structural 
that  we  seem  at  a  loss  when  the  entire  structure  disap- 
pears from  our  view.  But  how  does  a  structure  begin  ? 
Is  not  birth  as  much  a  mystery  as  death  ?  Form  is  of 
the  essence  ;  and,  in  a  sense  not  to  be  expressed  in 
language,  the  personality  has  eternal  form. 

"  Eternal  form  shall  still  divide 
The  eternal  soul  from  all  beside." 

In  the  same  sense,  familiarity  in  time  has  its  ground 


ANOTHER  irORLD  323 

in  the  eternal  familiarity,  whereby  alone  we  know  and 
are  known.     Our  cognition  here  is  re-cognition. 

The  formed  memory  and  the  formed  character  may  be 
destroyed  ;  but  the  life  withdrawn  from  these,  their  es- 
sential ground,  has  its  spiritual  embodiment  after  its 
distinct  type,  still  remembering  and  re-cognisant.  The 
"  deeds  done  in  the  body  "  are  not,  but  the  doer  is,  and 
according  to  those  deeds  :  in  essential  form  accordant, 
whatever  the  new  environment.  The  child  seems  an 
entirely  new  creature,  but,  whatever  science  may  deter- 
mine as  to  his  inheritance  of  characteristics  acquired 
in  preceding  generations,  he  is  surely  and  wholly  an 
heir  in  that  he  can  himself  acquire  anything — an  heir, 
not  simply  because  of  and  in  relation  to  an  outward 
heritage,  but  because  of  what  he  is.  There  is  in  this 
continuity  an  inscrutable  mystery  :  that  which  deter- 
mines the  accord  in  the  series  is  invisible.  It  is  the 
mystery  of  Genesis  itself.  The  continuity  phenome- 
nally is  through  discontinuity;  death  is  essential  in 
birth  as  in  growth.  Now,  let  the  break — that  interval 
in  the  harmony  which  we  call  death — be,  to  all  appear- 
ance, absolute  ;  then  the  resurgence,  beyond  our  vision, 
is  in  the  very  field  of  creation ;  passing  out  of  the 
known  series,  out  of  the  succession  of  what  we  know 
as  in  Time,  it  is  the  property  of  life  as  eternal,  the  heri- 
tage of  the  eternal  kinship,  under  a  ne^v  limitation. 

What  is  the  continuity  from  the  limitation  known  to 
us  to  that  new  and  wholly  unimaginable  limitation.^ 
The  mystery  is  transferred  from  the  visible  to  an  invis- 
ible death,  which  is  one  with  the  invisible  birth.  But 
the  new  birth — what  is  its  niatri.x  ? 

Suppose  we  were  permitted  to  resume  a  position  at 


324  A  STUDY  OF  DEATH 

a  point  in  time  before  the  appearance  of  organic  life 
upon  the  earth.  Would  any  then  existing  form  of  in- 
organic life  help  us  to  an  imagination  of  physiological 
embodiment  ?  Science  confesses  its  inability  to  answer 
the  question,  What  was  the  matrix  of  cell-life  ? 

An  equally  insoluble  mystery  is  presented,  if  we  in- 
quire what  is  the  matrix  of  any  form,  or  how  the  con- 
tinuity of  either  a  generic  or  an.  individual  type  of 
organic  life  is  maintained  in  all  permutations  of  environ- 
ment. It  is  a  mystery  belonging  to  creation,  incom- 
municable, itself  the  ground  of  communication.  No 
considerations  derived  from  what  we  know  of  the  con- 
stitution of  matter  or  of  material  structures,  and  none 
derived  from  mental  categories,  explain  the  transforma- 
tions of  the  visible  world:  how  much  less  can  they  be 
expected  to  even  suggest  the  forms  and  limitations  of 
an  order  of  existence  not  yet  creatively  communicated  ! 

Because  we,  in  our  present  existence,  have  no  con- 
scious knowledge  of  pre-existent  states,  it  does  not  fol- 
low that  the  future  life  will  be  wholly  denied  such 
knowledge.  Our  conscious  intelligence  here  is  a  dis- 
tinctive characteristic  of  the  ultimate  order  in  the 
known  series ;  and  in  man  this  intelligence  involves 
peculiar  powers  of  reflection,  co-ordination,  and  inter- 
pretation, so  that  the  psychical  as  well  as  the  physical 
man  surmounts  the  entire  series  resumed  in  him.  In 
a  new  order  it  may  be  a  characteristic  of  the  creative 
communication  that  conscious  intelligence  shall  be  a 
clearer  resumption,  involving  at  least  the  conscious 
recognition  of  friends  and  kindred.  Our  cognition 
here  of  anything  is  unconsciously  re-cognition,  a  seeing 
as  through  a  glass  darkly,  a  mere   adumbration  of  a 


ANOTHER  IVORLD  325 

recognition  hereafter  which  shall  be  a  seeing  face  to 
face.  Illusions  there  may  be — the  face  itself  is  a  veil 
— but  there  may  be  a  more  transparent  mediation  in 
the  communication,  undisturbed  by  the  obscurations 
and  refractions  such  as  limit  our  present  mental  vision. 
We  speak  of  what  may  be ;  every  presumption  of  a 
revelation  which  is  itself  a  transcendent  creative  com- 
munication gives  j^ssurance  instead  of  mere  hypoth- 
esis. 

To  our  reason  this  subject  is  beset  with  difficulties, 
because  we  become  entangled  in  dilemmas  suggested 
by  present  relations,  such  as  imprisoned  the  minds  of 
the  Sadducees  in  the  problem  they  presented  to  Christ. 

Because  the  new  assumption  or  embodiment  is  not 
of  flesh  and  blood,  as  we  know  them,  it  is  not  necessary 
to  suppose  that  it  is  immaterial.  To  it  a  new  sensibil- 
ity and  a  new  thought  would  involve  space  and  time  as 
forms  to  which  our  corresponding  terms  for  these  would 
be  merely  analogues. 

Given  us  a  new  sensibility,  there  would  be  given  us  a 
new  universe.  We  say  the  dead  have  passed  away  from 
us,  but  it  is  perfectly  reasonable  to  conceive  of  them  as 
nearer  to  us  than  ever,  in  a  closer  intimacy  than  any 
known  to  us. 

During  tlie  century  now  closing  man  has  made  an 
important  advance  through  dealing  with  subtle  cosmic 
forces  which  had  hitheito  been  known  only  as  dealing 
with  him,  and,  even  thus,  scarcely  appreciated.  Elec- 
trical phenomena  had  been  observed  in  sparks  occa- 
sioned by  friction  and  in  the  lightning,  and  the  magnetic 
current  had  been  utilised  in  the  compass  ;  but  the  terms 
electricity  and  magnetism  had  but  a  glint  of  the  mean- 


326  A  STUDY  OF  DEATH 

ing  now  attaclicd  to  them.  We  do  not  yet  know  what 
these  invisible  currents  are,  but  we  have  made  our- 
selves at  home  with  them,  and  comprehend  what  for- 
merly was  not  suspected — their  intimacies  with  all  cos- 
mic operation  and  with  our  animate  economies.  For 
the  obvious  terrestrial  forces,  manifest  in  weight  and 
pressure  and  elasticity,  we  are  now  rapidly  substituting 
these  finer  tensions,  thus  driving  the  horses  of  the  sun 
without  risking  the  fate  of  Icarus.  It  is  as  if  our  solar 
heritage  had  been  restored  to  us.  Through  this  widened 
familiarity  in  a  field  which  until  so  recent  a  period  was 
wholly  hidden  from  us,  w^e  have  reached  a  new  and 
etherealised  conception  of  matter,  and  have  come  to 
feel  the  pulse  of  a  living  universe.  Science  is  redeem- 
ing matter,  making  its  veils  transparent. 

In  this  new  view  it  is  not  difficult  for  us  to  conceive  of 
spiritual  intimacies  more  subtle  and  pervasive  than  any 
which  science  has  disclosed  in  the  material  world, 
though  these  cannot  be  apparent  to  us  in  a  definitely 
conscious  appreciation. 

If  on  the  same  wire,  through  electrical  vibrations  in 
musical  accord,  several  distinct  messages  may  be  simul- 
taneously conveyed,  why  may  not  all  that  we  call  matter 
be  at  the  same  time  the  medium  for  the  expression  of 
distinct  orders  of  intelligences.-' 

All  reasoning  proceeds  through  analogy,  but  we  must 
be  on  our  guard  against  the  fallacy  involved  in  the  proc- 
ess. The  truth  in  physics  or  chemistry  can  become  a 
biological  truth  only  by  such  transformation  as  is  in- 
volved in  the  inorganic  world  becoming  the  organic. 
Any  conception  of  our  present  conditions  carried  for- 
ward into  our  imagination  of  those  pertinent  to  a  future 


ANOTHER   IVORLD  327 

life  must  undergo  an  inconceivable  and,  to  us  here,  im- 
possible transformation. 

What  we  know  as  good  and  evil,  life  and  death,  is 
but  the  analogue  to  these  as  we  shall  know  them  in  an- 
other harmony.  It  is  sufficient  for  us  that  in  the  Christ- 
life  Death  and  Evil  are  unmasqued  for  us  and  reconciled 
with  the  Eternal  Life.  Our  faith  is  in  the  Resurrection 
through  the  power  of  this  eternal  life  :  in  what  form  we 
know  not,  but  we  know  in  what  similitude — in  the  like- 
ness of  the  Son  of  God. 

For  the  lifting  and  illumination  of  our  life  here  is  the 
great  disclosure  made.  Our  Lord's  resurrection  brought 
him  back  to  us,  as  if  born  to  us  a  second  time,  showing 
us  the  nativity  of  a  spiritual  body.  His  new  words  to 
his  disciples,  instead  of  intimating  the  joys  and  pains 
of  another  world,  dwelt  upon  the  sufferings  of  the  son 
of  man  before  he  could  enter  into  his  glory.  So  does 
our  faith  comprehend  our  travail  and  sorrow,  finding  in 
these  the  true  way  of  life  and  that  there  is  no  other 
way.  Christian  philosoph)'',  like  science,  finds  in  that 
which  is  the  ground  of  heaviness  the  charm  of  levitation, 
the  attraction  which  binds  together  a  universe. 


INDEX 


Abraham,  261-3. 

Abstraction,  42. 

Accords :  Desire,  in  the  line  of  special, 
144;  true  to  the  original  key,  what- 
ever dissonance  in  the  procession, 
157;  discrete,  sustained,  1S5  ;  diver- 
sification of,  in  the  organic  harmony, 
193 ;  special  for  each  new  form  of 
existence,  205,  316. 

Achilles,  in  Hades,  44;  among  the 
maidens,  a  type  of  juvenescence,2io. 

Age,  wakefulness  of,  19,  218. 

Alternativity,  13-16. 

Altruism,  illustrated  in  all  cosmic  de- 
velopment, 112;  in  every  economy 
of  animal  and  social  life,  159;  excess 
of,  in  human  relations,  172;  Chris- 
tianity substitutes  identification  for, 
2S4. 

Ancestor  worship,  29. 

Animal  life,  ascension  of,  115. 

Annihilation,  virtue  of,  46. 

Another  world,  31S-27. 

Antipathy  becomes  sympathy,  from 
which  it  springs,  159. 

Antitheses  of  the  Gospel,  301-2. 

Apollo,  37. 

Appearance  disguises  Reality,  88,  140, 

3'9- 

Arbitrary,  the,  in  human  conduct,  136, 
140. 

Art,  beginning  of  representative,  43. 

Ascent  of  Life,  1S3. 

Association  from  dissociation,  126,  150, 
.58. 

Athene  Parthenos,  the  type  of  outward 
completeness,  152. 

Atoms,  1S6. 

Attraction  and  repulsion,  comple- 
mentary, 144,  158,  236,  289. 

Augustine,  his  mission,  307-g,  313. 


Authority,  genetic,  142 ;  associated 
with  growth,  253  ;  grounded  in  falli- 
bility, 295. 

Aversion,  first  manifestation  of  De- 
sire, 205. 

Baptism,  a  burial  with  Christ,  280. 
Barrenness,  for  life,  iSS,  287;  Hebrew 

stress  upon,  226. 
Becoming  involves  fitness,  136. 
Birth,  a  flight,  69  ;  lies  next  to  Death, 

73,  1S4  ;  a  break  with  the  Eternal, 

143 ;  a  mysterj'as  profound  as  death, 

322. 
Blood  in  Hebrew  symbolism,  253. 
Bridegroom,  the,   40,    54,    164,  2S6-9, 

294-5.  300- 
Brotherhood,  universal,  51,  62. 
Buddhism,  nihilistic,  303. 

Cell,  gospel  of  the,  102. 

Chance,  divine,  156. 

Chemical  adumbration  of  physiology, 
107. 

Childhood,  familiarity  of,  with  the  in- 
visible, 18;  rapid  investiture  of,  in 
modern  life,  30;  plasticity  of,  203  ; 
pains  of,  204  ;  exaltation  of,  a  with- 
drawal from  the  world  and  an  imper- 
ative absorption,  208  ;  hauteur  of, 
208;  tension  and  storage  of,  213; 
maintained  into  maturity,  21S;  un- 
moral, 236,  270;  type  of  the  kingdom 
of  heaven,  237-243  ;  in  the  Christ- 
life,  238 ;  in  the  Hebrew,  240 ;  in 
primitive  Christianity,  304-5 :  in 
Christian  peoples  of  the  Middle 
Ages,  310. 

Choice,  127,  135,  140,  152. 

Christ,  one  with  Nature,  54 ;  became 
Sin  and  glorified  Death,  233  ;  falling 


33° 


INDEX 


of,  234  ;  attitude  toward,  of  Jew  and 
Gentile,  258 ;  the  universal  hope, 
260;  ever  the  Lord  to  come,  261; 
opened  heaven,  267-8  ;  ascension  of, 
269;  the  sun  of  the  spiritual  world, 
272;  stands  and  falls  for  humanity, 
266,  272,  294  ;  his  resurrection  the 
transcendent  nativity,  273  ;  Bride- 
groom of  humanity,  2S9;  no  part  of 
his  mission  to  abolish  evil,  290;  not 
to  be  wholly  imitated,  296 ;  as  a 
Prophet,  300. 
Christendom,  286-317. 
Christian     Philosophy    and    Science, 

81. 
Christianity,  gave  death  back  to  Life, 
62 ;  fully  confronted  Death,  274, 
279;  its  pilgrimage  not  away  from, 
but  through  the  City  of  Destruction, 
275;  a  catholic  fellowship,  280;  con- 
verted altruism  into  identification, 
284  -,  accommodation  of,  to  Pagan- 
ism, 285 ;  in  its  worldly  develop- 
ment contradicts  the  Sermon  on  the 
Mount,  295;  its  summer  and  win- 
ter, 299;  extension  of,  before  or- 
ganisation, 304 ;  organisation  of  the 
early,  306 ;  in  the  time  of  Constan- 
tine,  307;  medisval,  307,  309;  dis- 
sension of,  for  integration,  312. 
Church,  the  mediseval,  307-S. 
Civil  economy,  as  natural  as  domestic, 

160. 
Clairvoyance,  of  primitive  sensibility, 

34  ;  of  blind  feeling,  84. 
Comedy,  the  human,  125. 
Commandment  for  life,  169. 
Communication,  140. 
Communism  of  Christians  at  Jerusa- 
lem, 305. 
Competition,  iii. 
Completeness,  outward,  43,  152,  176, 

181,  297. 
Conjugal  relation   between   man  and 

the  Lord,  289. 
Conscience,  plastic   to  vital    determi- 
nation, 168;  the  Hebrew,  270. 
Consciousness,  68,  125. 
Constantine,  307. 
Consubstantiation,  41,  68,  287. 
Contradiction  of  system  to  principle, 
52,  127,  164,  166,  177,  182,  2S6-8,  296, 
308. 


i  Conventional  institutions  not  artifi- 
cial, 155,  170. 

Copernican  astronomy  restored  the 
earth  to  its  heavenly  station,  2S2. 

Creation  imagcless,  65 ;  hidden  in 
specialisation,  73-5,  S3,  84 ;  continu- 
ous, 90 ;  confessed  in  its  denial,  142  ; 
emphasised  in  Hebrew  faith,  252  ; 
Paul's  idea  of  a  new,  -277,  283  ;  in 
grace,  289;  redemptive,  294. 

Creative  communication,  325. 

Creative  specialisation  instead  of  spe- 
cial creations,  81. 

Critical  points,  86,  109,  211. 

Crystallisation  a  florescence,  log. 

Darkness,  Powers  of,  first  regarded 
as  friendly,  37. 

De  Quincey,  31. 

Dead,  the,  mightier  than  the  living, 
39;  plant-life  associated  with  the, 
29. 

Death,  before  Eden,  3 ;  the  body  of, 
9-12  ;  and  sleep,  10,  17-21 ;  seclusion 
and  introspection  of,  1 1 ;  the  soul's 
confessional,  1 1 ;  the  invisible  Angel 
of  Life,  13,  275  ;  no  movement  of  life 
begun  or  completed  save  through, 
13  ;  a  mystery  escaping  observation, 
14;  a  reaction  proper  to  life,  14; 
essential,  an  absolution,  17;  gravita- 
tion the  physical  symbol  of,  22 ; 
Janus-faced,  looking  to  palitif^cnesis 
and  to  resurgence  of  new  life  upon 
the  earth,  24  ;  mystery  of,  bound  up 
with  that  of  evil,  25;  primitive 
thought  of,  29 ;  denial  of,  in  human 
progress,  45 ;  the  power  of  resur- 
gence, 45  ;  a  wrestler,  inviting  con- 
flict, 46;  for  renewal,  54;  universal- 
ity of,  56;  inseparable  from  Love 
and  Grief,  56;  in  the  Sacred  Myste- 
ries of  Paganism,  60;  in  creation,  65; 
the  vv'inged  Israfil,  66;  genetic,  not 
to  be  found  in  the  old  and  dead,  66 ; 
lies  next  to  birth,  73,  184;  solvency 
of, 82;  in  completing  a  cycle,  always 
a  transformation,  88;  of  the  inor- 
ganic for  ascent  of  organisms,  gg  ;  as 
specialised,  enters  the  world  with 
Love,  102,  321;  conspicuous  in  or- 
ganic life,  log;  invisibly  is  Love, 
and  visibly  is  born  of  Love,  109 ; 


INDEX 


3>2>'' 


Nature  runs  toward,  and  accumu- 
lates in  her  progression,  112,  154; 
ministrant  to  psychical  development, 
123,  18S;  conflict  witli,  in  the  moral 
order,  134;  genetic,  142;  develop- 
ment from  conflict  with,  148;  the 
shadow  of  a  brightness,  154;  con- 
fesses Life,  177;  included  in  as- 
cent of  life,  178,  28 1 ;  in  reproduc- 
tion, 184 ;  organic  capacity  for,  187 , 
expressed  in  the  terms  of  life,  iSg, 
191 ;  in  functioning,  florescence,  and 
fruition,  189,  28S;  a  prop,  igo;  an 
inspiration,  196 ;  obscuration  of,  in 
maturity,  215;  unmasqued,  223; 
illustrated  and  glorified  by  Christ, 
233  ;  Pauline  interpretation  of,  274- 
317  ;  in  spiritual  nurture,  311  ; 
thither  side  of,  what  do  we  know  of? 
3.8-27. 

Decline,  218-20;  disarray  of,  320. 

Deeds,  inipotency  of,  2S4 ;  "done  itj 
the  body,"  323. 

Defect,  radical,  200, 

Degeneration,  112. 

Demeter,  36. 

Design,  81,  167,  256. 

Desire,  earthward,  36 ;  finding  its 
Way,  40;  shaping  power  of,  40, 
importunity  of,  76 ;  follows  accord, 
144  ;  begins  in  aversion,  204-5. 

Dissociation,  seems  primary,  126;  be- 
comes association,  126,  159. 

Dissolving  view,  spiritual  suggestion 
of,  68. 

Distance,  illusion  of,  72  ;  value  of,  124, 
185,  198,288. 

Disturbance,  a  stimulation,  130;  the 
beginning  of  motion,  293. 

Divestiture,  229 ;  in  life  of  the  Hebrew 
and  of  Christ,  229,  238-46,  298. 

Divided  Living,  the,  66-132. 

Divination,  39,  156. 

Divinisation  at  death,  39. 

Dove,  the,  and  the  serpent,  3-5, 
303- 

Dreams,  19,  20,  41. 

Dualism,  Manichajan,  53,  179. 

Duty,  146. 

Earth,  nearness  of,  to  the  primitive 
man,  36;  the  Great  Mother,  36;  the 
prodigal  planet,  70  ;   Copernican  re- 


demption of,  282  ;  bride  of  the  Sun, 
286-8 ;  glory  of  life  on  the,  292. 

Ebionites,  sterile  asceticism  of,  25S. 

Election  the  principle  of  integration, 
285. 

Elohim,  the  dead  and  angels  so  called, 
43- 

Elysium,  37. 

Espousals,  286-9. 

Eternal  in  Time,  17S-S0,  2S0. 

Ether,  vortical  motions  of,  1S6. 

Eumenides,  31,  32,  44. 

Evil,  inseparable  from  Good,  5;  mys- 
terj'  of,  bound  up  with  that  of  Death, 
25;  attempt  to  exclude,  in  moral 
ideals,  61,  98;  not  merely  disci- 
plinary, 17S;  begins  with  life,  206 ; 
unmasqued  by  Christ,  231-2;  inclu- 
sion of,  in  the  Christ  life,  235,  266; 
Pauline  interpretation  of,  274-285  ; 
not  abolished  by  Christ,  290 ;  not 
for  the  sake  of  Good,  292  ;  the  other 
name  of  Good,  293  ;  included  in  the 
kingdom  of  heaven,  295  ,  lifted  into 
its  heaven,  321  ;  like  Good,  and 
Death,  as  known  here,  merely  ana- 
logues of  what  they  will  be  in  another 
world,  327. 

Evolution,  81,  94,  no. 

Evolution  and  Involution,  S3,  in,  143, 
155,  186. 

Expectancy  in  creative  transformation, 
87;  in  man,  87. 

Experience,  limitations  of,  127;  pecul- 
iar aspects  of  human,  135-7;  not  di- 
vorced from  vital  destination,  140; 
fruits  in  the  garden  of,  151 ;  not  de- 
pendent on  arbitrary  selection,  167. 

Explosiveness  of  precipitation  at  crit- 
ical points,  211. 

Fai.i.  of  Man,  120,  148. 

Fallibility,   of  the    regenerate,    295 ; 

necessary  to  progress,  295. 
Familiarity,     the     eternal,     43,     67, 

323- 

Family,  the,  144,  160,  175-6. 

Fatness  in  Hebrew  symbolism,  253. 

Fear,  as  natural  as  hope,  38 ;  origin 
of  religion  attributed  to,  150;  de- 
velops cunning,  150;  rather  an  in- 
ward boldness,  shown  outwardly  as 
shyness,  154. 


332 


INDEX 


Feeling,   blind,  specialisation   of,   S5, 

Fiske,  John,  ot,  216. 

Flesh  and  Spirit,  116,  254. 

Formed  Life,  mortal,  177,  323. 

Fortitude  becomes  sacrifice,  175,  309. 

Free-will,  133,  140. 

Functioning,  a  dying,  iSg. 

F'uture  State,  primitive  idea  of,  35,  37, 
61 ;  we  have  no  definite  conception 
of,  318;  ancient  imaginations  of, 
318-19;  continuity  of,  from  present, 
324. 

Genetic  Quality  of  Life,  67,  68,  105, 
'33.  '4'.  M3,  157.  i(>7- 

Gentile  embodiment  of  Christ,  259-60. 

Germ  plasma,  physiological  doininion 
of,  142. 

God,  the  Prophet's  vision  of,  as  of  one 
who  has  passed  by,  lO;  the  Most 
Low  to  the  primitive  thought,  38; 
the  first  materialist,  76;  responsible 
for  His  universe,  77;  the  hiding  of, 
83,  125;  always  in  His  world,  and 
always  creative,  go;  "hath  so  set 
the  world  in  the  heart  of  man,"'  127 ; 
has  not  experience,  136;  portion  of 
every  creature,  144  ;  when  we  touch 
chance,  we  broach,  156,  good  plea- 
sure of,  in  humanity,  282. 

Golden  age,  14S,  153. 

Good,  repented  of,  98 ;  our  idea  of,  as 
partial  as  our  idea  of  Evil,  293. 

Government,  weakness  of,  requires 
special  fortification,  151 ;  is  natural, 
160. 

Grace  and  works,  in  Paul's  interpre- 
tation, 277,  279,  2S4. 

Gravitation,  physical  symbol  of  Death, 
22,  igo;  included  in  ascent,  23,  25,95. 

Growth,  genetic  transformation,  105. 

Habit,  113,  149;  automatism  of,  a 
release,  315. 

Hades,  39,  43,  26S;  primitive  idea  of, 
as  the  ground  of  germinant  life,  29, 
32  ;  riuto,  the  god  of  wealth,  30. 

Harmony,  distributed  in  order,  155, 
198. 

Heaven,  267-g. 

Hebrew:  the  broken  man,  225;  singu- 
lar destiny  of,  226;  had  no  outwardly 


completed  art,  science,  or  polity,  227, 
242  ;  his  inward  wholeness,  227  ;  re- 
pellent sacred  flame  of  his  destiny, 
228;  distinguished  from  other  Se- 
mitic races,  242  ;  his  prolonged  pa- 
triarchate, 243,  265;  his  marvellous 
assimilation,  243  ;  his  culture  of  Em- 
manuel, 245,  265 ;  held  with  diflfi- 
culty  to  his  destiny,  245  ;  his  faith 
as  distinguished  from  the  pagan, 
246 ;  prophetic  compulsion  of,  247 ; 
his  thought  of  God,  24S ;  anthropo- 
morphism of.  252  ;  symbolism  touch- 
ing incarnation,  253-4 ;  his  singular 
destiny  not  supernatural  256 ;  atti- 
tude toward  Jesus,  258 ;  type  set  in 
the  patriarchal,  shepherd,  and  tent 
life,  262-6;  movement  consummated 
in  Christ,  270;  his  idea  of  Sin  as  con- 
nected with  that  of  kinship,  270-1; 
the  issue  of  his  destiny,  271-3. 

Hebrew  Scripture,  32,  241. 

Heracles,  36,  209,  288. 

Heraclitus,  221. 

Hiding  of  God,  83,  125;  of  life,  84, 
137.  3'6. 

Homely  sense  of  things,  67,  72,  80,  86, 
96,  142-3,  174. 

Homer,  his  representation  of  Hades, 
44.  3 '9- 

Hospitality,  158. 

Humanity  a  disguised  Divinity,  29, 
41- 

Hunger,  selective  wisdom  of,  40,  311- 
12  ;  perils  of,  300. 

Illusions,  of  appearance,  52  ;  of  sci- 
ence, 113;  of  arbitrary  freedom,  127, 
142 ;  the  veils  of  transformation- 
scenes,  129 ;  of  experience  in  a  moral 
order,  161-4;  as  mental  inversions, 
194. 

Imitation  of  Christ,  must  avoid  exact 
similitude,  296. 

Incarnation,  physiological  intimations 
of,  103-4;  the  eternal  Word  becom- 
ing, 104;  the  cosmic  expectancy  of, 
114;  the  central  idea  in  Hebrew 
symbolism,  253-5. 

Individualism  and  free  play  of  all  ac- 
tivities developed  in  Christendom, 

313- 
Induration,  77,  173. 


INDEX 


3ZZ 


Inertia,  186,  iqo;  in  nutrition  and  res- 
piration, 2S2. 

Infancy,  miracle  of,  202. 

Inhibition  in  nature,  133,  141,  170. 

Inorganic  life,  living  and  sentient,  57, 
91,93;  ascents  of,  hidden  from  us. 
99 ;  why  we  call  it  dead,  99;  descent 
and  diminution  of,  for  the  ascent  of 
organisms,  100,  106. 

Instinct,  hidden  beneath  rational  pro- 
cesses, 59,  127  ;  conscious  intelli- 
gence from  interruption  of,  158. 

Involution,  83,  ni,  143,  155,  186,  191, 
19S,  20S. 

James's  Epistle,  ethics  of,  305. 
Jew,  the  Wandering,  233. 
Justice,  61,  150,  161,  170-1,  251. 
Juvenescence,     includes    death,     23  ; 
sleep  characteristic  of,  ig,  218. 

Kei'i.er,  belief  of,  in  an  animate  and 
sentient  universe,  57. 

Kinship,  primitive,  35,  49  ;  first  de- 
rived from  motherhood,  36 ;  first 
seen  as  dissociative,  58 ;  primitive 
thought  of,  as  including  the  universe, 
57  ;  genetic,  involved  in  creation, 
67,  the  eternal,  141-2,  200,  the  par- 
ticular, determined  by  the  universal, 
144,  159,  lays  no  stress  upon  justice, 
161 ;  the  beginning  and  end  of  the 
moral  order,  180;  revelation  of  by 
Christ,  235  ,  Hebrew  idea  of,  252-3, 
255,  261,  276;  Paul's  view  of,  277; 
bondage  the  bond  of,  278,  283  ;  re- 
alised in  Christian  fellowship,  282. 

Lethe  and  Levana,  39,  130,  137. 

Liberty,  127. 

Life :  transcends  embodiment,  17 ; 
holds  the  secret  of  its  ruin,  24;  the 
pontifcx  jiKixiiitiis,  82 ;  hiding  of, 
84,  137,  316;  quality  of,  the  same, 
whatever  the  situation,  88;  higher 
and  lower,  97;  seeks  difficulty, 
III  ;  determines  environment,  114; 
15s,  212;  spontaneous  disposition 
of,  133 ;  in  its  spontaneity  unmoral, 
141;  not  an  endowment,  146,  195; 
does  not  follow  a  logical  plan,  155, 
167,  172;  one  with  destiny,  156; 
originally  consents  to  what  in   the 


phenomenal  strife  it  antagonises, 
156;  outwardly  a  dying,  189;  deter- 
mines its  own  limit,  192  ;  begins  in 
disturbance,  204  ;  outward  quicken- 
ing of,  210;  momentum  of,  212; 
beneficence  of  its  ruins,  214;  must 
be  accepted  on  its  own  flaming 
terms,  236. 

Light,  the  first  veil  hiding  God,  83. 

Limit:  a  bound  and  a  bond,  68;  more 
complex  in  advanced  specialisation, 
124;  in  human  experience,  130; 
merciful,  173,  286;  of  capacity,  dis- 
closing reaction,  186;  determined  by 
the  reaction  proper  to  Lite,  191-92, 
2o5;  ab  initio,  195;  the  bond  of  re- 
turn, 236;  the  sign  of  emancipation, 
316;  the  Resurrection  involves  new 
form  of,  323- 

Loss,  for  gain,  199 ;  the  first  word  of 
the  kingdom,  240. 

Lucifer,  Light-bearer,  must  rise  again, 
293- 

Luther,  312. 

Maeterlinck,  31. 

IMahometanisni,  the  modern  Ishmael, 
303  ;  the  opposite  extreme  of  Nihi- 
listic Buddhism,  303. 

Malady,  normal,  205. 

Man  :  primitive,  33  ;  brotherhood  of, 
51  ,  development  of,  corresponds  to 
that  of  the  cosmos,  75-6  ;  distinctive 
in  his  specialisation,  117;  his  reca- 
pitulation of  antecedent  forms,  118, 
193;  fall  of,  120,  148;  his  insignifi- 
cance as  a  mere  animal,  121  j  his 
singular  psychic  destiny,  121 ;  plan- 
etary and  solar,  126;  fallibility  of, 
130;  lost  in  the  Prodigal's  "far 
country,"  130;  superficial  retrospect 
of  his  progress,  147-53  ;  a  closer 
view  of,  153-68;  not  a  fragment  of 
the  world,  179;  one  with  the  Eter- 
nal, 180;  his  restoration,  283;  re- 
covers his  solar  heritage,  326. 

Manich.Tcism,  53. 

Materialism,  divine  pattern  of,  76. 

Matter,  living  and  non  -  living,  57 ; 
why  we  call  it  dead,  99  ;  solvency  of, 
114,  iSi,  326;  is  not  acted  upon  by 
other  matter,  145  ;  idea  of  it  as  refrac- 
tory, 152  ;  diabolism  of,  315  ;  may  be 


334 


INDEX 


the  medium  of  ihc  simultaneous  ex- 
pression of  distinct  orders  of  intelli- 
gences, 326. 

Maturity,  214. 

Mechanism,  15,  67,  139,  179,  190. 

Merit,  146,  151,  169. 

Metabolism,  144,  184. 

Middle  Ages,  popular  life  in,  310. 

Mineral  kingdom  foreshadows  phys- 
iological processes,  91. 

Molecular  imitation  of  the  molar, 
107. 

Momentum,  212. 

Moral  Order,  133-1S2  ;  begins  in  spon- 
taneous disposition,  133  ;  tendency 
of,  to  inflexible  rule,  134  ;  resists  dis- 
integration, 134;  superficial  view 
of,  emphasises  arbitrary  selection; 
134-9;  duty  in  the,  146;  kinship 
modified  by,  147  ;  superficial  view  of 
human  experience  in  the,  147-153; 
a  closer  view,  153-168;  does  not 
derive  its  sanction  from  religion,  161 ; 
begins  and  ends  in  kinship,  180 ; 
grounded  in  a  spiritual  principle, 
181. 

Mortal  habit,  the,  130,  176,  190,  191, 
196,  207,  288. 

Mosaic  Law,  the,  tenderness  of,  249; 
in  its  origin  a  fatherly  command- 
ment, 278 ;  leading  to  Christ,  279 

Mother,  the  Great,  36. 

Motion  in  lines  of  least  resistance, 
true  in  evolution  but  not  in  involu- 
tion, III. 

Mysticism,  native,  33;  inedia;val  and 
modern,  49;  meaning  of  the  term, 
52 ;  the  ultimate,  54  ;  nihilism  of,  a 
sterile  simplicity,  286. 

Native  impressions,  29-62 ;  not  found 
in  degenerate  races  called  "  savage," 
32 ;  survive  in  some  passages  of 
Hebrew  Scripture,  32. 

Native  Races,  characteristics  of,  155 

Nature,  meaning  of  the  term,  17,  one 
with  the  Lord,  54  ;  her  apparently 
closed  circles,  90 ;  apparent  hostility 
to  man,  148;  inhibition  in,  133,  141, 
170. 

Newton's  mystical  apprehension  of 
gravitation  as  an  attraction,  22. 

Nirwana,  49. 


Nothing,  creative  void,  65;  vanishing 
side  of  life,  192. 

Nutrition,  105-6 ;  a  conversion  of  the 
altruism  of  reproduction  into  identi- 
fication, 159;  fruition  from  check  of, 
109;  spiritual,  a  descent  and  broken- 
ness,  311. 

Odvssei;s  in  Hades,  44. 

Olympian  divinities  outside  the  pale  of 
human  sympathy,  57,  120. 

Organic  I^ife ;  adumbration  of  the 
Christ-life,  90,  102-3 ;  preparation 
for,  92,  184-5;  3  physiological  plan- 
etary system,  100;  fully  expressed 
in  incarnation,  103-4;  reflecting 
Godward,  103,  200 ;  reveals  creation, 
105  ;  reversion  of  the  inorganic,  106  ; 
suggestions  derived  from,  contra- 
dicting scientific  dicta,  109-14; 
earth  as  modified  by,  121-3;  rises 
out  of  a  barren  world,  186,  its 
especial  inclusion  of  death,  1S7. 

Organisms,  lower,  have  a  kind  of  im- 
mortality and   marvellous   potency, 

lOI. 

Paganism,  disintegrated  by  civilisa- 
tion, 60  ;  confined  to  Nature's  closed 
circles,  6i  ;  weakness  of,  61,  297; 
distinguished  from  Christendom,  62; 
distinguished  from  Hebraism,  246. 

Paradise,  37,  267. 

Paradox,  35,  199. 

Partners,  our  Cosmic,  196. 

Pathology,  normal  and  universal,  58, 
214;  so  recognised  by  Christianity, 
62;  especially  associated  with  be- 
ginnings, 205. 

Paul,  his  interpretation  of  Death  and 
Evil,  274-285 ;  his  view  of  bondage 
and  redemption  as  universal,  278; 
his  idea  of  Grace  and  of  Works  of 
the  Law,  278,  his  doctrine  of  elec- 
tion, 285. 

Persephone,  31,  36. 

Personality,  mystery  of,  21,  145;  form 
of,  eternal,  322. 

Perspective,  gain  of,  in  specialisation, 
84- 

Pessimism,  134 ;  field  of,  that  of  the 
largest  hope,  315. 

Pharisees,  sect  of,  began  in  the  loftiest 


INDEX 


335 


spiritual  ideal,  227;  early  adherents 

to  Cliristiaiiity,  260. 
Pliilo  Jud»us,  53. 
Physiology  foreshadowed   iu    chemis- 

tr)',  107-S. 
Plato,  221  ;  his  "  Ideas,"  1S5. 
Pluto,  30,  31. 
Poe,  31. 

Polygnotus,  319. 
Pomegranate,    many  -  seeded,    pledge 

between  Persephone  and  Pluto,  31  ; 

held  in  one  hand  by  the  Eumenides, 

32- 
Prejudice  more  vital  than  logic,  172. 
Primitive  man,  29,  33,  56. 
Probation,  37,  178. 
Prodigal   Sons,    a    Cosmic    Parable, 

63-182. 
Prometheus,  61. 
Prophets,     Hebrew,    247 ;      primitive 

habit  of,  reversed  by  Christ,  300. 
Protestantism,  308,  312. 
Protoplasm,  wonderful  potency  of,  1S7. 

Quickness,  the  invisible  and  the  vis- 
ible, 211 ;  of  Death,  2S1. 

Reaction,  tropic,  13-16,  35,  85  ;  dis- 
closed at  limit  of  tension,  186  ;  is  in 
the  action,  86 ;  in  conservatism,  178  ; 
gives  limit  and  dominates  expres- 
sion, igi  ;  of  childhood,  209;  readi- 
ness of,  in  modern  Christendom,  315. 

Recapitulation  in  man  of  antecedent 
forms,  I  iS,  193,  202. 

Recognition,  40j  128;  in  another  world, 
324- 

Rectitude,  61. 

Redemption,  creative,  53,  294 

Religion  not  a  necessary  sanction  to 
morality,  161. 

Repentance  in  natural  and  human 
transformations,  53,  231,  251. 

Reproduction,  in  the  lower  organisms, 
IGI ;  beginning  of  death,  1S4,  207. 

Repulsion,  seems  primary,  205  ;  begins 
and  ends  in  attraction,  236. 

Resistance  becomes  assistance,  130. 

Responsibility,  human  and  divine,  77, 
14S,  249. 

Resurrection,  82,  255,  269,  272,  273, 
277.  279-80,  291,  31S,  327. 

Revelation,    a    transcendent    creative 


communication,    325;     kinship    the 
basis  of,  41,  264. 
Roman  Empire,  151;   family   life  in, 
160,  expansion  of  early  Christianity 
in,  304. 

Safety  not  an  objective  aim  in  Nat- 
ure, 112. 

Samson's  Riddle,  17. 

Schopenhauer:  "  the  will  not  to  live," 
303- 

Science  postulates  an  invisible  world, 
15;  mysticism  of,  23-4;  ignores  the 
creative  principle,  73  ;  its  possible 
Christian  philosophy,  Si  ;  deals  with 
quantitative  relations,  95,  no;  certi- 
tudes of,  denied  by  creative  life, 
109-14. 

Seed,  liberation  of,  by  Death,  31. 

Selection,  no  absolutely  arbitrary, 
140. 

Selfhood,  50,  128. 

Sensibility  begins  in  pain,  38,  154, 
204-5- 

Separation,  if  vital,  the  breaking  of  a 
union,  which  still  remains  one,  in- 
cluding the  fragment,  145. 

Sequestration,  mercy  of,  174,  193,  199 

Serpent,  and  the  dove,  3-5 ;  sign  of  the 
underworld  divinities,  30. 

Sex,  specialisation  of,  102  ,  and  Death, 
102,  321 ;  divulsion  for  union,  288. 

Shaler,  N.  S.,  87,91,  211. 

Sheol,  37,  43,  267. 

Sin,  reconciliation  of,  with  the  eternal 
life,  25,  1S2  ;  Hebrew  idea  of,  270; 
Paul's  interpretation  of,  27S. 

Singularity,  225. 

Sleep,  and  Death,  10,  17-21 ;  a  charac- 
teristic of  juvenescence,  19,  21S; 
education  of,  39. 

Social  evolution  like  the  cosmic,  155. 

Solar  system,  repeats  the  parable  of 
the  Prodigal  Son,  70. 

Solitude,  dehumanising,  50. 

Son  and  the  Father,  67,  182. 

Specialisation,  6g,  73,  75,  77,  So,  185, 
195  ;  creative,  8r,  92,  94 ;  of  Death 
and  Sex  concurrent,  102  ;  a  hiding  of 
life,  316. 

Specific  forces,  1S5. 

Spencer,  Herbert,  86,  no. 

Spirit,  Hebrew  idea  of,  254. 


336 


INDEX 


Spiritual  life  not  divorced  from  Nat- 
ure, 55. 

Spontaneity,  133,  i6g. 

Stability,  tendency  toward,  78  ;  an  illu- 
sion, 1 12,  164,  177  ,  is  kinetic,  315. 

Structure,  strength  of,  gained  at  ex- 
pense of  life,  134,  147,  163,  177. 

Sun,  worship  of,  36;  witness  of  the, 
92 ;  a  martyr,  99. 

Superstition,  original  exaltation  of,  34. 

Surprise,  86-7. 

Survival,  Nature  seeks  revival  ratlier 
than,  112. 

Suspense,  77,  124,  141,  184,  216 

System,  contradicts  its  principle,  52, 
67,  70-1,  127,  164,  166,  177,  182,286- 
8,  2q6.  308. 

Swedenborg,  102. 

Thompson,  J.  Arthur,  122. 
Time,  emphasis  of,  79,  138, 178. 
Titans,  37. 

Transformations,  genetic,  creative,  68. 
Tropic  movement,  13-16,  35,  85,  143, 
167,  178,  1S6,  199,  252, 


Uniformity,  disguising  transforma- 
tion, 88. 

Unity,  a  sterile  conception,  85. 

Universe,  living  and  sentient,  57,  91, 
93- 

Veiling  of  Life,  83,  84,  96,  19S,  316. 
Vital  and  chemical  processes,  23,  186. 

Water,  associated  with  death  and 
birth,  44  ;  transformations  of  adum- 
brating physiological  processes, 
107-8. 

Wave  lengths  of  forces,  186. 

Way,  the,  40. 

World  to  come,  not  a  better,  accord- 
ing to  moral  preference,  but  a  new, 
98;  of  nature,  100;  distinguished 
from  "  another  world,"  320,  322. 

Youth  and  age,  204. 

Zero,  the  sign  of  infinity,  47. 
Zodiac,  signs  of,  applicable  to  every 
cycle  of  life,  209. 


THE    END 


GOD    IN    HIS    WORLD 

An  Interpretation.  By  Henry  Mills  Alden. 
Book  I.  From  the  Beginning.  Book  II.  The 
Incarnation.  Book  III.  The  Divine-Human 
Fellowship,  pp.  xli..  270.  Post  8vo,  Cloth, 
Uncut  Edges  and  Gilt  Top,  §1  25  ;  White  and 
Gold,  $2  00. 

The  book  is  a  remarkable  contribution  to  current  relig- 
ious literature.  The  author  has  brought  to  bear  on  the 
questions  he  discusses  a  wide  and  thorough  knowledge 
not  only  of  the  questions  themselves,  but  of  many  other 
lines  of  thought  which  are  intimately  related  to  them.  .  .  . 
Out  of  all  the  jarring  religious  creeds  and  speculations 
that  hav'e  marked  the  history  of  the  race  he  deftly  con- 
structs a  many-colored  but  harmonious  flood  of  mosaics 
upon  which  the  Son  of  God  may  walk  in  the  mighty 
Temple  of  Eternal  Truth.  ...  In  these  days,  when  bald 
materialism  has  gained  such  a  foothold  even  in  the 
Christian  Church,  it  is  a  hopeful  sign  to  find  a  book  like 
this,  so  full  of  genuine  spirituality  and  yet  so  free  from 
pious  vapidity  and  cant. — iV.  V.  Tribune. 

A  remarkable  book.  The  temper  in  which  it  is  written 
is  so  fine,  its  tone  is  so  authoritative  without  the  sem- 
blance of  dogmatism,  and  the  sweep  of  thought  is  so 
large  and  steady  that  one  is  fain  to  receive  it  as  what  it 
claims  to  be,  an  interpretation,  and  so,  in  the  radical  sense 
of  the  word,  a  prophecy.  Like  prophecy  in  its  most  uni- 
versal type,  it  is  revolutionary  in  spirit,  in  obedience  to 
an  eternal  conservatism  ;  and  it  is  only  as  one  moves  on 
through  the  phases  of  the  evolutionary  thought  of  the 
book  that  he  fails  to  be  startled  by  the  quiet  conclusions 
with  which  the  author  confronts  him. — Atlantic  Monthly. 

A  very  notable  book.  ...  It  gives,  often  in  rhetoric  as 
splendid  as  it  is  simple,  the  sum  of  all  philosophy  and  of 
all  theology,  the  revelation  through  nature  and  that  in 
human  words.  Many  passages  are  true  prose  poems. — 
Brooklyn  Eagle. 


A  book  like  this  is  not  made  in  a  day,  and  will  not  per- 
ish in  a  day.  It  has  a  mission  greater  than  that  of  any 
modern  religious  work  that  we  know  of,  and  it  would  not 
be  surprising  to  see  it  attain  a  hold  upon  the  humbled  hu- 
man heart  and  the  struggling  human  intelligence  some- 
thing like  that  of  the  "  Imitation  of  Christ." — Philadel- 
phia Inquirer. 

It  is  profoundly  suggestive,  and  on  new  lines  and  with 
freshness  and  power  discusses  world-old  problems. — 
Christian  Intelligeneer,  N.  Y. 

This  book,  if  we  mistake  not,  has  a  work  to  perform  in 
the  spiritual  field  not  unworthy  to  be  compared  with  that 
which  "  Ecce  Homo  "  wrought  in  the  sphere  of  practical 
Christianity.  ...  It  is  such  a  view  of  human  activities  as 
this  that  the  Christian  world  needs  to-day.  It  is  to  the 
Christian,  to  the  devout  believer,  to  him  wiiose  spiritual 
faculty  has  been  to  some  degree  exercised,  that  the  mes- 
sage of  this  book  comes. — l£vangelist,  N.  Y. 

It  cannot  fail  to  increase  the  spirit  of  religion  and  faith 
in  God's  goodness. — Boston  Journal. 

It  is  this  quality  of  individual  vision  and  certainty 
which  makes  people  listen  to  the  new  prophet  who 
speaks  in  the  pages  of  "God  in  His  World."  .  .  .  After 
reading  the  book  one  puts  it  down  with  the  feeling  that 
a  sensible,  trustworthy  person  has  said,  with  the  certainty 
of  absolute  conviction,  rooted  in  an  unspeakable  knowl- 
edge, "  I  know  that  these  things  I  tell  you  are  true." — 
Boston  Transcript. 

There  is  the  throbbing  heart  of  a  living  faith  in  this  re- 
markable little  volume. — Philadelphia  Press. 

A  pleasing  and  thoughtful  writing,  clear  of  all  dogma- 
tism, and  appealing  to  the  highest  and  noblest  in  the  hu- 
man soul.  The  greatest  questions  that  have  ev'er  been 
propounded  to  the  human  mind  are  here  traversed  in  the 
light  of  reason  and  art  and  science  and  history. — Chicago 
Inter-Ocgan. 


Published  by  HARPER  &  BROTHERS,  New  York 

The  above  work  is  for  sale  by  all  booksellers,  or  will  be  retailed 
by  the  publishers,  postage  prepaid,  on  receipt  of  price. 


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